Razor Cut Smile: Yet Another Halloween Fanfiction
by Colleen
Summary: It's Halloween yet again, and this time when Xander goes to buy his plastic gun his attention strays to a lovely set of silver razors. Crossover Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Sweeney Todd.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Sweeney Todd. They both belong to their creators and whoever else holds copyright and licensing. I'm just borrowing them for my own attempts at a YAHF. This is for entertainment purposes only and no moneys will be made from this fanfiction.

Author's note: Warning, this is really clichéd, but I really wanted to try my hand at a YAHF, having read so many of them. For the most part I am following the Buffy Halloween episode, so if you aren't interested in rehashing it then you won't be interested in this. I also rearrange, delete and mangle events as I see fit, so it won't be an exact retelling. Xander, by the way, is the only one with a different costume.

I do hope to continue the story past the end of this chapter, but I don't know when that will be happening, as all my current ideas are mostly disconnected scenes at the moment.

Hopefully this will entertain, and I apologise in advance if I step on any toes along the way. As I said, I have read a lot of YAHFs and I have probably absorbed bits from other stories that I don't even realize I've picked up.

Author's note 2: Even though I mention the theatrical version of Sweeney Todd, this is a crossover with the 2007 movie. The movie is, of course, unknown to characters set in 1997, and if the differences are noticed, they'll probably just be chalked up to that wacky Hellmouth/Sunnydale effect.

Razor Cut Smile: A Yet Another Halloween Fanfiction 

By Colleen

Xander shook his head as he watched Buffy try to talk Willow out of her seasonal Halloween costume.

Good luck there, he thought. Willow hadn't worn anything for Halloween but a ghost costume since she was five. With a fond smile for his best friend he turned back to the tub of plastic weaponry and pulled out an automatic rifle that would go well with the army fatigues he had back home. The 1.98 price tag was a good deal and the gun would turn the tired old clothing into a costume for the night.

"Are you finding what you're looking for?" A voice, with an English accent, asked from behind him.

"Ah!!" Xander whipped around, ready to chew Giles out for sneaking up on him. Therefore, he was rather surprised to find someone who was not Giles shaped behind him.

"Uh, yeah," he said, only slightly perplexed, as he held up the gun.

The guy, who introduced himself as the Ethan the shop was named after, gave the piece of plastic a slight frown. "You seem to be several pieces short of a costume if that's all you're going to buy."

"Nah, I've got a set of fatigues at home, this is just to make it seem a little more authentic."

The Ethan guy looked at him, giving his head a little twist to the side as if he could see something about Xander that others couldn't.

"Well, it looks like the costume will be a good match for you," he said, as he waved Xander over to the cash register.

Xander wasn't sure if that was a compliment or an insult, and the way the guy had said it hadn't given him any clues to it one way or the other. Although he had almost sounded... disappointed.

Or maybe he was just putting his own emotions into what he was hearing. It wasn't that he didn't want to go as something more interesting, but the toy weapon was all he could afford.

The shop owner was just starting to enter the charge for the gun into his cash register when he swore quietly and pulled the top of the machine open. "Sorry, I've got to change the paper; it'll just be a moment."

"No rush," Xander replied, using the time to look around the shop and try and see where the girls had ended up.

As he turned back to watch the guy wrestle with the register a flash of silver caught at the edge of his eye. He looked down into the display cabinet that doubled as the counter to see a set of 7 silver razors, the old kind that he thought used to be called throat cutters, sitting in an open wooden box.

What a weird ass thing to find in a costume shop.

"Finally." He looked up to see Ethan snap the top back on the cash register. Xander looked at him and frowned slightly. Weird ass things on the Hellmouth were not usually of the good.

"Um, before you ring that in, I was wondering if you could tell me about these?" Xander asked, pointing into the case.

"Hmm?" Ethan looked down into the case at the set of razors and then back at Xander. He blinked, several times, before looking back at the razors. He then he took a longer, slower look at Xander.

--000--

Ethan wasn't all that fond of looking at auras. They tended to give him a headache after awhile and the entire concept was so new ageish that doing so annoyed him on general principals. Still, he had found that it was a great way to match up certain people with certain costumes, ones that would ensure that the night had just that dollop more of chaos.

When he'd looked at the boy with his gun, he could see that the costume would be an excellent fit for him. It would blend well with him and would probably influence him for years after this night. It would even smooth some of the boy's rough edges and fill in a few of his deeper patches of darkness.

Still, it was a boring costume.

And then he asked about the razors.

Now this, this was a match. A match made in Hell perhaps, but what a match. While the rough edges, those mostly due to the boy's youth, were still smoothed over, those dark places had found something that could match them and push them even deeper. Of course, it wasn't an exact match, as the two of them were rather like jagged pieces of broken crystal, carefully refitted together. However, even though they would be chipped and cracked in places, they would hold.

And it was a much more interesting costume to boot.

"Ah, you know, you're the first person who's asked about these," he said, as he reached into the case and brought the blades out. He pulled one out of its nesting place and flicked it open with disturbing ease.

Xander took a startled breath. The razor was beautiful; something he'd never thought he'd think about a shaving implement.

"Sterling silver, hand carved design on the handle." He closed the blade and handed it to Xander, who held it gingerly, like just breathing on it would damage it in some way.

"I got them in a shipment of theatrical props. Apparently they were made for a production of Swee..."

A sudden crash pulled both of their attentions over to the bin of plastic guns that had suddenly fallen over, without any apparent help.

Ethan frowned at the mess and looked around the shop, which was now empty of everyone but him, the boy and the two girls he had come in with. A smudge of left over power hung around the plastic guns, power that smelled of order and balance and hadn't reacted well to the shop's wards at all. He suspected someone or something didn't like the idea that Ethan was about to get the boy to buy a different costume.

A smirk of a smile crossed his face and for a moment he basked in his enjoyment at the chance to fully tick off whatever power it was that had tried to interfere.

"Anyway," he said, his eyes still darting around the shop, "they never actually used them in the production. A storage note I found with them mentioned that the leading man had gone and sliced himself open with the things during a rehearsal and the production itself closed a week after it opened due to some kind of accident. I bought them in a set of items from the theatre at an auction last month. If you're interested, I do have the costume that goes with them. I'll make you a good deal on a rental."

Xander blew out a breath. He was strangely drawn to those razors, a fact that had him slightly concerned about his mental state. Still, good deal or not, there was no way he could afford even a rental. He placed the blade he was holding back into its nest, intending to turn the offer down and just buy the gun, when the Ethan gestured over to the girls.

"If that is anything to go by it looks like the young lady may be going as a noble woman. The dress is from about the same time period, give or take a few decades, as the barber's costume, so you'd match. Although you would be playing the commoner to her titled position."

Xander gave a slight laugh. "Nothing new there, although only Queen C has ever called me a commoner to my face."

"I take it that that isn't 'Queen C'"?

"Eh, oh no, that's Buffy."

Ethan blinked and then looked at the petite blonde girl gushing over the red velvet and pink satin ball gown.

So that was the Slayer. Oh, this really was too, too perfect.

"Look," Xander said, "I can't really afford..."

"How much do you have on you right this moment?"

"What?"

"How much?"

"Um," Xander quickly dug through his pockets, stripping them and his wallet bare and laying the findings out on the counter.

"Seven dollars and... thirty nine cents," he said dejectedly, knowing that there was no way the guy would let the razors go for that.

"It's a deal." He quickly closed the box and slid it into a bag before going over to the racks and pulling a bagged costume down. He pulled the rental tag off of it, had Xander sign it and then handed him both bags.

"Instructions are in with the costume, oh and here," Ethan reached over to a display of cheap Halloween make up and tossed a multiuse package into the bag with the razors. "You'll probably need that as well."

And just like that Xander found himself standing outside the store and holding a lot more costume than he'd expected.

"What just happened?"

He turned back to the shop. A look through the window showed that Ethan was now busy helping Buffy with the fancy gown, while Willow watched from the sidelines. He looked back down at the costume in his arms. Sure, he knew that Buffy was probably hoping to impress a certain brooding vampire with that get up, but that didn't mean he couldn't try and impress her in return.

He gave a nod and decided that he had better get on home and look the thing over. The costume didn't look too difficult to wear, but given that it had instructions and makeup, it would probably be harder than he thought.

--000--

As Xander walked over to Buffy's to collect the girls the next day for their 'volunteer' duties he pulled at the collar of the costume, as the darn thing kept trying to choke him.

It was a good thing he had started getting dressed as soon as he'd gotten home from school, as some of the pieces just weren't things that the modern teen would know how to wear. The pinstripe pants, the white, almost pirate like shirt, the fingerless leather gloves and the boots had been fine. Although the suspenders really could have used the help of a couple of extra hands getting them on. The belt was a worse problem, what with the extra bits to it that were designed so you could have a barbering towel, a strop and a holster big enough to hold two of the razors on it. However, all of that paled when it came to trying to tie the neck rag ascot thing. Even with the instructions it had taken him a half dozen tries before it came even close to looking right. The vest and the short jacket thing with the long sleeves, that the instructions referred to as a barbering coat, were easy by comparison.

There was also a pinstriped leather jacket, strange in the way that it looked both modern and 19th century at the same time. Xander stared at it for some time as he debated whether or not to wear it. In the end he decided it just looked too cool not to use, even if it was a warm night.

The makeup he'd thankfully put on before getting dressed and it hadn't been too difficult. He'd just had to pale his complexion and red rim and grey circle his eyes, before pulling on the black wig with the white shock of hair.

Of course, the last thing he did was to carefully use the strop to sharpen two of the razors, (there were instructions for that as well) before slipping them into the holster, doing so with a mental plea that no one would try to get a good look at the things. Principal Snyder would freak if he knew he was carrying a blade and the parents of the group of kids he'd be escorting wouldn't be too happy either.

He could have left the things at home, but he knew in his heart that if he did the costume would be incomplete.

He made a slight gurgling sound and pulled at the collar again, startling a couple of women who had already been throwing him disturbed looks. Another tug finally got the thing to where he could breathe regularly and he left off fidgeting with it. Another two people, this time a middle aged married couple from the looks of them, walked past him, giving him their own disturbed look.

This costume must be more effective than he thought it would be.

Of course with the white makeup and the wig the whole thing had a bit of a vampire vibe, which was something he could have lived without. Only the fact that the description sheet said that the character had been wrongly imprisoned for 15 years, before he'd managed to return to England to search for his wife and child, had made him go with the makeup. He figured that being locked away all that time would probably bleach all the colour out of you and as long as that was the reason for being pale and not some need for the blood of others, then he was fine with it.

Xander wouldn't know it yet, but while he was mostly right about the paleness he would, in a strange way, be wrong about the blood.

The description also said he was equal parts brooding, manic and murderous as he plotted the demise of the man who both exiled him and tore his family apart. He wasn't sure about the brooding or the murderous, but he suspected he could pull off manic.

--000--

A few moments after his knock on the door at Buffy's place, it opened to reveal that same young woman resplendent in a ball gown, her blonde hair covered over with a high piled, brunette wig.

"Ah, Lady Buffy," he said with a bow and an incredibly bad English accent, "I completely renounce modern fabrics," he looked back up at her with a grin that attempted to mix insanity with amusement, "even spandex."

Buffy snorted in a completely unladylike manner before remembering herself. She gave him a little curtsy. "Why thank you sir."

She frowned a little at his costume. It appeared to be 19th century with a serious modern gothic twist to it. The costume also fit him well, something most of his clothes didn't do as he tended to go for the baggy look.

"So who are you supposed to be?"

"Early 19th century barber with a thirst for revenge."

"Huh?"

Xander shrugged, "the guy gave me a good deal on it."

"Well it looks great."

Xander smiled back at the complement, not even attempting to stay in character.

"Oh, but wait until you see Willow," Buffy started, "she's..." and they both turned towards the top of the stairs to see Willow in all her sheet clad glory, "Casper," Buffy said, her voice going from happy to depressed in the space of that one word.

"Hey Will, that's a fine Boo you've got there." Xander told his friend, wondering slightly about what costume Willow had chickened out on at the last minute.

The ghost acknowledged his words with a little wave.

"Well my ladies, May I escort you to our terrifying duties, leading the ravenous hoards of sugar hyped groundlings?"

And off they went to meet their fate.

--000--

"What in Hell is going on?" The pale man with dark hair asked as he looked around, confused. Wherever here was, wasn't where he'd been a few moments ago. Not that the little demons running around and the screams that filled the air were what was throwing him. Those were things that he had long since become use to. No, it was the fact that he appeared to be outside, with fresh air and growing things, when he'd become accustomed to stagnant air and the stench of brimstone and cooking flesh.

And even as he realized that, the memories of that place started to fade, becoming a shadow that wrapped around his mind and thoughts, hiding most of the knowledge away where he couldn't get to it.

He growled slightly, annoyed that his mind appeared to be failing him as he kicked a demon who'd thought to attack him out of the way. If he couldn't remember that place properly then that left where he'd been before, which wasn't much better. Bleeding to death from a slit throat as he cradled his dead wife in his arms, with the smell of Mrs. Lovett's burning body in his nostrils, had been all too similar to where he'd been after that.

The little demon turned out to be idiotically persistent and attempted to attack him again. The barber reached to the holster on his belt and pulled out one of his old silver friends, flicking it open with practiced ease. Somewhere in the back of his mind the fact that he had previously been denied these blades rose up from that shadowed part of his memory, but he shook it off, needing to handle the threat in front of him before dealing with anything else.

He'd pulled his arm back to strike, when the most indecently dressed woman he had ever seen threw herself between him and the demon.

"No Xander, don't. It's not a demon, there's a little kid in there."

He pulled back, startled by the woman's sudden presence and not by any need to stay his hand. Demon, child, what did he care? The whole stinking mass of humanity deserved to die, himself included. As for demons, normally he wouldn't have cared one way or the other. They were, after all, a necessary evil in that place he had recently been. However, wherever he was now, was someplace they did not belong.

And who the hell was Xander?

The little demon took that moment to decide that the young woman would be the better meal and jumped her; well it attempted to jump her. It's springing attack carried it through her body and it rolled as it hit the pavement, coming to its feet before staggering off, giving up on the both of them.

The barber was surprised and noticed that the prostitute was as well, more so than he in fact, as she appeared to be absolutely stunned.

"Are you a spirit then?" He asked, his voice a baritone rumble that helped to hide just how flat and cold it really was.

"I, I, I..." The girl looked down at herself, and then it was as if a light dawned in her mind. "I was dressed as a ghost."

"What?"

"Xander, I think that everyone has become their costumes. I was dressed as a ghost and now I am one."

"The ghost of a street walker?"

Willow gasped and attempted to cover her bare midriff. "Xander! You know darn well I was all covered over with a sheet."

He blinked, a little surprised. So the girl had been rendered down to her underwear, or whatever these garments were, by her...death? He guessed he really shouldn't be surprised; there was something far too innocent about her, especially when he compared her to the whores that worked the dark corners of Fleet Street.

Wait, she said she had become her costume, and she kept calling him by another name.

"Miss, you keep calling me Xander, but that isn't my name." He would be polite for the moment, or at least until he knew what was going on. Besides, it wasn't like he could get rid of her by killing her, as she was apparently already dead.

"Xander..., oh." She looked at him, her eyes wide. "You've become your costume."

"Possibly, do you know what this 'Xander' went as?"

"You didn't say exactly, something about a 19th century barber, I think."

The boy must have the worst luck, to have dressed as something so vague and get him as a body guest.

19th century?

"If this costume was date specific, then what year is it now?"

"Um, 1997."

He'd really thought that there wasn't much in life, or death for that matter, that could surprise him, but he felt his knees weaken and threaten to drop him to the ground with that piece of information.

150 years since he had last been alive. It wasn't possible.

It was also unwanted.

The growls of larger, more dangerous predators filled the night's air and the girl tried to grab hold of him, no doubt in an attempt to drag him off to safety. That didn't work of course, as she ended up falling though him. She stumbled a couple of steps before catching her balance, her expression one of annoyance and mild panic.

"Darn it."

"What were you hoping to accomplish?" He asked with a slight frown.

"We need to get somewhere safe and we need to find, oh my gosh, Buffy," and the spirit ran off towards a young, dark haired woman in a ball gown.

Buffy? And he'd thought Xander was a strange name.

Voicing something between a grunt and a sigh he headed over to join the two women. He turned back to the street when he realized that the growling noises were now louder. Two demons, both far larger than the little one that had attacked them earlier, were sizing them up from across the road.

"Oh my gosh Buffy, what do we do?"

He turned his head slightly, keeping one eye on the demons and sparing the other one for the two girls. In this way he was able to see the only appropriately dressed female in their group pass out, moments after she had seen the monsters.

With his razor still in his hand he gave his full attention back to the demons, a smile that spoke of the dark joy he would take in rending the flesh from their bones on his face.

They took one step towards the three of them before wisely deciding to find different, easier prey.

Apparently these demons had some added intelligence to go with their size.

"Buffy, are you alright?"

He spared a brief glance towards the two girls, to watch the ghost hover over the young noble woman as she came out of her swoon.

"What?" She asked.

"Are you hurt?" He asked, as he kept a watch for further annoyances.

"Buffy, are you hurt?" The ghost asked as well.

"Buffy?"

The ghost seemed to droop. "Oh no, she's not Buffy."

He considered asking if she meant that she wasn't Buffy right now, or if she had never been Buffy, but he decided he'd had enough of the current situation.

"We need to find a safer place to be, preferably inside somewhere."

The ghost thought for a moment. "I know a place."

--000--

Willow walked through the back door of Buffy's house.

"Mrs. Summers?"

Getting no answer she carefully poked her head back through the closed door.

"Okay, no one's here."

She pulled back as Xander opened the door and hustled Buffy inside. She watched as the two of them looked around the kitchen, almost identical looks of confusion on their faces.

"Where are we?" Buffy asked.

"Your place. Now if we can just..."

A banging at the front door had Xander moving towards it in frowny face mode.

"Xander."

"Todd"

"What?"

"My name, it's Mr. Todd."

"Okay, Mr. Todd, you can't open that door, it could be a demon."

Xander gave her a look that he'd never aimed at her before. Usually Cordelia was the recipient of the 'are you mentally deficient' glare.

--000--

He finished his journey to the door and was carefully looking through the little window in it when a demonic hand punched its way through the glass. A quick move of his head and a twist to his body took him safely out of its way. Another quick movement had his razor in his hand, open and ready to use.

"Xan..., Mr. Todd, no!"

"Well what do you suggest I do, shave it?" He asked her, with a withering glare. He held up the razor and turned back to the door. Looking though the little window, past the hand trying to grab him, he held the creature's eyes with his own.

"Fancy a shave?"

"**Uhhhhh,**" was the creature's answer. Then the hand was suddenly pulled back and the sound of the demon running away came quite clearly through the broken window.

Mr. Todd blinked at the retreating monster for a few moments. "You know..., I didn't really think that would work."

A woman's screams broke him out of his surprise and with a sigh he opened the door. Another indecently dressed young lady was running down the street, being chased by something with far too much hair. Just thinking about the amount of sweeping up he'd have to do after giving that thing a trim made his mind boggle.

"Help her!" The ghost yelled out behind him.

He holstered his razor, and then took off out the door at a run to help the young woman. Not so much because the ghost had asked him to, but because no matter how many times over a murderer he might be, no matter how dead inside he was, he was still enough of a gentleman that he could not easily ignore a lady in distress.

Not that he couldn't do it; it just grated more than leaving a man in the same situation.

The girl screamed again when he grabbed her, and then she recognised him, or at least she recognised the body he was in.

"Xander?"

"Come inside."

--000--

Willow called out Cordelia's name just as Xander, or Mr. Todd as he'd identified himself, slammed the front door shut.

"What's going on?" Cordelia asked, her voice close to panic.

"Okay, your name is Cordelia, you're not a cat, you're in high school, we're your friends - well, sort of."

That bit of babble snapped her panic, letting the girl slid into the safety of the snarky comeback.

"That's nice Willow, and you went mental when?"

"You didn't become your costume." That statement came from Xan..., Mr Todd.

"No, why would I have?"

"Because we all appear to have done so. That you have not means that whatever is causing this mess may only be able to target certain individuals." He frowned in thought. "I wonder why?"

"What do you mean, you've become your costumes?"

"Well, as far as I knew it, the year is 1847 and I'm a barber named..."

"No," Buffy said, "no, it's 1775, and I'm supposed to be at the governor's ball, not, not, not here."

Cordelia looked back and forward between Buffy and Xander before focusing on Willow, "and if this, whatever it is, had happened to me, I'd be a cat right now?"

Willow and Mr. Todd both nodded, Buffy simply looked disbelieving at all of them.

"And all I thought I had to worry about was the fact that I'll never get my deposit back from Party Town." Cordelia said as she attempted to pull together the tears in her costume.

Xander/Todd, well Willow wanted to say he frowned, but it was hard to describe it that way, as he gave the impression that he did so without significantly changing his expression. Either way he appeared to disapprove of the state of Cordelia's costume and he pulled off the leather coat he was wearing and placed it around her shoulders.

"Uh, thanks."

He nodded once, then turned his attention to the front door and windows again.

"Cordelia, I can't actually touch anything," Willow said, proving the point by waving her hand through the staircase's newel post. "I need you to call Giles."

"Yes, yes." Cordelia jumped for the phone, using the little job as a way to not freak out over what Willow had just done. She brought the hand piece up to her ear and then frowned. "No, no." She jiggled the receiver buttons for a moment and then hung up, shaking her head.

"It's dead."

"Darn." Willow thought for a moment. "Okay, I'm going to go get help. If something tries to get in, just fight it off."

"It's not our place to fight. Surely some men will come and protect us?" Buffy asked, hopefully.

Cordelia rolled her eyes and Willow shook her head, muttering something as she turned and walked through the nearest wall.

Xander, or whoever he was now, frowned after the departed ghost. With a look of vague confusion on his face he turned towards Cordelia and asked her. "Who exactly is Xena and why does Willow think the young lady should have dressed up as her instead?"

"Ho boy."

--000--

Mr. Todd sent the young lady dressed as a cat upstairs, to check that the windows were locked. While she did that he busied himself with dragging the dining room table over to the front room, to use it as a barricade for the picture window. He wasn't exactly gentle about getting the thing in place and once it was secure he moved to pick up a couple of items that he'd knocked to the floor during his trip through the room.

One of the items was a framed photograph of excellent clarity and in colour, no less. In it were three people. One of them was the ghost, Willow, the other Miss Buffy, who apparently was blonde most of the time and the last was a young man, whom he had not met this night.

He frowned, or had he?

After a quick search, he found a mirror in the front hallway and took a good look at himself. Well his hair was as he remembered it, as was his complexion and the dark glitter in his eyes that spoke of rage and pain and the need to quench it with blood.

But, his face was that of the boy in the photo.

"Surely there's somewhere we can go? Some safe haven?"

Sweeney glanced at the young noble woman who had just spoken and was standing near him, wringing her hands. He blinked as he realized the silly thing had been following him around since young Willow had left and he hadn't really been paying attention to her.

Rather like him and Mrs. Lovett, really.

"To what point and purpose? I would hardly think it wise to travel the streets out there, no matter what promise of safety should we make it. Besides, I know of no safe haven." He handed her the picture that had set off his recent discoveries, hoping that making a few of her own would keep her quiet.

"This could be me!"

No such luck then.

"I rather suspect it is you."

She no doubt would have argued that suspicion with him, if a new voice hadn't interrupted at that point.

"Oh, good. You guys are all right."

Sweeney turned towards the voice, his hand on the razor at his side. A young man, one the ladies would no doubt consider handsome, stood in the door way to the strange room they'd been in when they'd first come into the house. He was dressed in black fabrics and leather and carried with him a brooding quality that Sweeney was as familiar with as breathing.

"It's total chaos out there."

"Who are you?" He asked, the question echoed by the young noble woman.

--000--

"Okay, does somebody want to fill me in?" Angel asked, feeling the relief at finding everyone was alright start to dribble away as the two of them stared at him blankly.

"Do you live here?" Xander asked him, rather formally, his voice slightly deeper than usual and sporting an English accent. If the situation wasn't so strange, Angel would have engaged in a little verbal sparring with the boy over that and the fact that he'd apparently dressed as a vampire this night.

"No! You know that. Buffy...I'm lost here. You..." He stopped and took a better look at the slayer. "What's up with your hair?"

Cordelia chose that moment to enter from another room. "They don't know who they are, everyone's become a monster, it's a whole big thing." She paused to turn a smile, so bright it could blister on him. "How are you?"

Unfortunately the brightness wasn't literal, as they could have used it in the next moment when the lights went out.

Buffy, unsurprisingly, screamed and grabbed hold of Cordelia, who shook her off with a, "do you mind?"

"Miss Cordelia?" Xander asked.

"Yeah?"

"Since you seem to know him, could you take this... gentleman with you and check the front of the house. I'll take the Lady and check out...whatever that room over there is."

"You mean the kitchen?"

"Ah, that explains...some of the things in there."

"You don't know what a kitchen is?" Angel asked.

Xander glared at him, very effectively too. "Of course I know what a kitchen is; it doesn't mean I recognized that room as a kitchen." He said, before he took Buffy's arm and dragged her off into the now much discussed kitchen.

Cordelia shrugged at him. "Like I said, they don't know who they are, in fact I don't think they even know when they are."

--000--

Mr. Todd moved stealthily into the kitchen, or as stealthily as one can move with a noble woman in a ball gown, hanging onto the back of one's barbering coat. He'd have shaken her off, but was afraid that doing so would make too much noise.

Once they were far enough into the room, it didn't take long to realize that something was wrong. Or at least more wrong than the very unfamiliar items in what should have been a very familiar type of room. Sweeney reached behind himself and detached the young noble woman from his coat and moved towards the kitchen door. The shouldn't have been open, but was, kitchen door. He pushed it closed and looked around with a frown on his face. While he, for some reason, felt a certain distaste for the young man who had come in earlier, he didn't actually believe that he was stupid enough to leave them exposed by not closing the door when he'd come in.

A shriek behind him spun him around and he watched with some amusement as 'Buffy' attempted to keep some overdressed... demon he guessed, from grabbing her. The creature must have been hiding in the stairwell to the lower level and the girl was making a valiant attempt at beating it to death, with what was probably the basement door. The effort, while not without its effect, would, he suspected, ultimately fail as the thing was far stronger than the girl.

The Lady shrieked again when Mr. Todd grabbed her by the shoulders and moved her aside, allowing the monster to finally get the door all the way open. Todd shoved her behind him and smiled as the creature moved to attack them.

There was no phantom with red hair and inappropriate clothing to step between him and his prey this time. He let the demon, or whatever it was, get just close enough, but no closer, before he moved to caress the thing's neck with the edge of his razor.

Normally he'd have stepped out of the way of the fountaining spray of blood. Over time and with practice he'd gotten rather good at avoiding covering his clothing in the gore that followed one of his deeper cuts. However, the physical confines of the room, as well as the terrified girl behind him shrieking in his ear, gave him little room to manoeuvre. So he'd only had time to raise his arm in front of his face, mostly to keep the blood out of his eyes.

While the left arm of his barbering coat took the brunt of the spray, the rest of it hit and ran down the right side of his face, causing him to blink furiously as the viscous fluid seeped into one of his eyes. He paused to wipe the worse of it away, as the demon pawed at its own throat in an apparent attempt to stem the bleeding. Expecting it to drop to the floor in its final death throes, Sweeney turned from it towards the now beyond hysterical noble woman, who should have lost her voice long ago if the screaming was anything to go by.

Her voice did falter, just long enough for her to take in his bloodied appearance and get one good look into his eyes. Then she let out a scream that made all the others seem anaemic by comparison. She flung open the kitchen door and fled into the night.

She wouldn't have gotten very far, as Sweeney could easily have run down a woman trying to move at speed in a ball gown. However, he didn't even make it to the door before something grabbed him from behind. He growled and jammed his elbow into the chin of whoever it was behind him, turning as he did so.

It was with some shock that he realized that the demon he'd just killed was standing there, growling back at him. Sweeney ripped its throat open again, with a lot less finesse than he'd usually use. He didn't even need to step out of the way, as the creature didn't seem to have much blood left to bleed with. The man from earlier and Miss Cordelia came tumbling into the room while he stood there watching the thing's throat close up and heal.

How many times was he going to have to kill it anyway?

"We need a stake." That was from man.

"No wait; it might just be someone who's turned into their costume." That was Miss Cordelia.

Actually, given the ridiculous clothing it was wearing, that was completely possible. Apparently the young man thought so too, as instead of killing it he threw it through the open door and told it to stay out, before slamming the door shut.

"Where's Buffy?"

Sweeney started to methodically clean his razor with the towel hanging from his belt. "She ran off," he said, nodding towards the closed door.

"What?" The man said, before opening the door again. The twice sliced demon stood on the other side, fangs bared. The young man punched it and it dropped to the ground, like a puppet with cut strings. He stepped over the unconscious body. "We have to go find her."

Sweeney closed his razor and placed it back in its holster. He was inclined to tell the boy to go ahead and do so, only without him. Instead he simply said, "very well," and followed him and the girl. He really wasn't sure why he was bothering, but it wasn't like he had anything else to do. And maybe, just maybe, he'd finally get to kill something.

--000--

The Lady ran, or tried to at least. For the first time in her life she realized just how useless a ball gown really was. It wasn't fair. She wasn't supposed to be here, in danger. At least not without a wealthy and handsome knight to ride to her rescue. Only there were no knights here, only monsters.

She crashed into a pile of crates, exhausted by running while dragging along several layers of skirt and doing so in shoes meant for dancing not dashing. For the first time since she bolted from that house she looked around to see where she was. How, she wondered, had she managed to run so far that there were no longer rows of neat, if strange little houses. Instead she found herself in an alley of crates, garbage and the blank facades of warehouses.

"Oh, look at the little lost pretty."

She turned with a gasp and quickly tried to back away from the filthy pirate, who stood behind her. She had no doubt that the lewd grin on his face did not bode well for her current situation.

"Give us a kiss love."

The mere thought of that mouth full of rotting teeth anywhere near her own was enough to make her gorge rise. She swallowed it down quickly and continued to back away. She'd forgotten, however, that the crates from earlier were now behind her. The moment her back touched them she found herself pinned against them by the pirate. She screwed her eyes shut as he bent down to try and kiss her, too terrified to even scream anymore.

With a grunt of protest the man's vile presence disappeared. She carefully opened her eyes to see Mr. Todd glowering down at her, before he turned to deal with the pirate who was picking himself up off of the ground where he'd been thrown.

The pirate threw a punch at the barber, who blocked and stepped in closer, using the opportunity to stomp his hobnailed booted foot down onto the instep of the pirate's bare one. The man howled, but didn't bother to grope the injured appendage. Instead he punched at Mr. Todd again, managing to clip him on the chin. Mr. Todd staggered back a couple of steps, before growling and coming at the pirate once more.

During this time Cordelia and Angel finally reached Buffy. The displaced Lady gave out a sob and latched onto Cordelia, who 'oofed' in protest at the rough handling.

"Buffy?" Angel asked, reaching out to her carefully.

"He's a demon, a fiend in human form."

"What? Who?

She sniffed and tried to cower even closer to Cordelia. "Mr. Todd." She answered, bringing both of their attentions back to the man, who was now whaling on the pirate. Cordelia and Angel watched with some fascination as the barber dropped the pirate to the ground with a head butt and then gave him a couple more kicks to the ribs for good measure. Mr. Todd backed off a couple of steps, keeping the pirate in his sights, while bending slightly with his hands on his knees as he worked to bring his breathing back under control. For the first time since they'd left the house, they both realized just how much blood the barber was covered in.

"Uh, it's okay. He only did what he had to do to protect you. He would never hurt you, he's our friend." Cordelia told Buffy, as she peeled the girl off of her.

"Really?"

"Yeah...Sure."

Angel walked carefully over to him.

"Xander?"

Mr. Todd looked up at him. "It's strange, but beating up that pirate has brought me an odd feeling of closure."

Before Angel could say anything to that Willow ran up.

"Guys, you've got to get out of here," she said, pointing the way she'd come. Spike and an assorted group of monsters were quickly gaining on their position.

"We need to get inside, something we can defend," Angel said as he grabbed Buffy and started dragging her down the alley, testing doors as they passed them. Cordelia followed with Mr. Todd and Willow bringing up the rear.

"Mr. Todd," Willow said as they backed up together.

"Yes?"

"The blonde vampire in the middle."

"Vampire?...Ah." He nodded like that suddenly explained something. "Yes, what about him?"

"That one you can kill."

--000--

Sweeney had a sort of half smirk on his face as he helped the young man barricade the warehouse door. The promise of something to kill raised his spirits immensely. Of course the pirate had been invigorating, although it had been strange that he'd never even considered pulling a blade on him. He had gained far more pleasure out of the feat of pummelling the wretch into unconsciousness, than he would have gotten by merely cutting his throat. It wasn't the same level of completeness he'd gotten from the Judge's death, but it had been satisfying none the less.

The doors shook and demonic hands started to punch their way through the flimsy material. The girls moved further into the warehouse, Willow hovering while Buffy clung to a very annoyed Cordelia. He and the young man, that he still didn't have a name for, backed away from the door, choosing to gain the space to fight over trying to hold it closed. With a crash the junk they'd piled up to stop the door from moving went flying everywhere and little monsters swarmed in, like ankle biting Chihuahuas. As soon as he kicked one away, two more would latch on. He and his companion both lunged for the blonde vampire as soon as the bastard entered, but some of his larger followers interceded and it wasn't long before the two of them were held fast.

--000--

Spike pulled Buffy out of Cordelia's arms, just as the girl was swarmed by a number of the smaller demons.

"Look at you. Shaking, terrified. Alone. Lost little lamb." Spike said to her in a quite, kindly voice. One that, given her almost tears and the terrified expression on her face, she didn't believe.

He slapped her then, hard. She dropped to the flooring with a sob of pain and horror.

"I love it." Spike chortled, before grabbing her by the hair to pull her up to him.

"Buffy." Angel struggled against the demons holding him, trying to get to her, but they were to strong for him.

Mr. Todd, by comparison, had more success. He used his boots to good effect once more, scraping the heel of one down the leg of the creature holding him, before coming down on its foot hard enough to snap bone. The thing made a noise somewhere between a choke and a scream and let him go. He had his razor in his hand and was about to throw himself bodily at the blonde vampire, when he felt something pass through him that made the world wobble for a moment, before it seemed to flip over completely.

"What the..." Xander said, looking around confused.

The sound of someone other than Buffy weeping caused Spike to look around. His fine group of minions were now a crying, trembling mass of children and teenagers. He looked back at Buffy to find that, while he still had hold of her hair, she wasn't actually wearing it at the moment.

Wigless and blonde, Buffy gave the vampire a smile that froze him to his core. "Hi Honey, I'm home."

Xander stood back and admired Buffy's handiwork as she basically kicked Spikes ass from one end of the warehouse to the other. There's nothing, he thought, quite like watching a Slayer at work. He gave his head a shake. That was odd, for a moment it had felt like something inside of him had agreed with him.

Buffy throwing Spike against one of the metal walls with a clang brought him out of whatever it was and they all watched as the whipped vampire scuttled out of the building like a chastised dog.

"Hey, Buff. Welcome back."

"Yeah. You too." She said, smiling slightly at Xander.

Cordelia looked back and forward between the two of them. "You guys remember what happened?"

Xander nodded. "It was way creepy. Like I was there, but I couldn't get out."

Cordelia pulled slightly at her cat suit and aimed her next comment towards Angel. "I know the feeling. This outfit is totally skin-tight."

"You okay?" That was Angel, but he had eyes only for Bully.

"Yeah."

Cordelia stared in open mouthed disbelief, as Angel took Buffy by the arm and lead her away.

"Hello? It felt like I was talking. My lips were moving..."

Xander just shook his head at her. "Give it up, Cordy. You're never going to get between those two. Believe me. I know."

Cordelia sighed and the looked around, noticing the stunned and tearful trick-or-treaters.

"I guess we should get them back to their parents."

Xander agreed. "Yeah. It seems like everybody is..." He looked around, suddenly concerned. "Where's Willow?"

--000--

Xander got home and managed to make it up to his bedroom, without waking his parents. He was exhausted. They had spent a couple of hours collecting children and herding them back to the school, where their scared and confused parents were waiting for them. Along the way they'd come across Willow, who'd found herself back in her very alive body once the spell had been broken. She'd filled them in about Ethan Rayne and his enchanted costumes, along with the fact the Giles seemed to know the guy.

Xander striped down to his boxers, peeling the bloody and sweaty clothing off with a look of distaste on his face, before dropping the items in a heap by his bed. He'd bundle up the lot of it in the morning and toss it, having no intention of returning it to the most recent Big Bad, rental or no rental. After a quick trip to the bathroom, he proceeded to crawl into bed and pass out with much gusto.

About thirty minutes later he sat up. With a bit of fumbling he turned his bedside lamp on and looked around the room like he'd never seen it before. He got up and collected the clothing at his feet, minus the belt, boots and leather gloves, dragging the pile of it into the bathroom. Once there he turned on the light, looking up at the fixture curiously before dumping the pile of clothing into the bathtub. After a bit of fiddling with the drain plug and the taps, he got the cold water going. Letting the water run he went back into his room and opened the closet.

Wincing slightly at the colourful display of clothing he searched through them, until he found a pair of black dress pants and a plain white button up shirt. He put them on, noticing that they were a little tight, but still wearable. He searched the dresser for a pair of socks and pulled them on, before sliding his feet back into the boots that came with the costume. He yanked the towel and strop off of the belt and buckled it up around his waist, checking to make sure that the two razors were still in the holster. After a quick stop in the bathroom to turn off the water, he quietly made his way downstairs and out the front door.

--000--

Ethan finished taping a box shut and handed it off to one of the demons that he'd hired to help him pack up the shop. He knew Ripper was probably out running damage control, but he would be back later and he wanted everything gone before he did. Besides, just imagining how pissed off Giles would be when he found out that he'd come back and made off with everything brought a big old smile to his face.

When a hand grabbed him and slammed him up against a wall he thought maybe he'd started chortling too soon. The very sharp item at his throat however, didn't seem like Ripper's usual style.

"I believe we have some things to discuss, you and I."

He blinked at the teenager in front of him. The face was familiar, but he was having trouble placing him. The voice, or more specifically the accent, English, like his own, didn't match up with anyone he'd met in the last few weeks.

"Do we now?" He said, as he waved for help from the demon that was just standing there like a moron, still holding the box he'd just given him.

He boy turned his head slightly to look at the demon, seeming to hold it in place with his gaze. "This discussion is just between me and your employer. You've no need to become involved in it."

The demon looked at him a moment longer before shrugging and heading towards the back of the store, taking the box out to the loading van in the alley.

Ethan sighed. "You really can't get good help these days." The blade came in a little closer to his throat and he tilted his head back, trying to get away from it, but only ended up giving his assailant a better target.

"You sold a boy a costume and razors for a 19th century barber, named Sweeney Todd."

"No, I rented them... I rented them to you." Ethan said, finally placing him.

"Consider them sold."

Ethan put his hands up in surrender. "Consider them yours."

The boy nodded. "Thank you. Now what I would like to know is, if the spell has been broken, why am I still here?"

Ethan felt the blood drain from his face. "You...you're still Sweeney Todd?"

The boy nodded again, slowly.

"Oh...crap."

The boy smiled, sort of. A smile usually expresses happiness, but this one somehow spoke of a darker joy, one that would see Ethan very, very dead if he didn't come up with something, and quick.

"What happened to the boy?"

"He's still here, he's just asleep. He actually had control up until then."

"Ah," Ethan said, refraining from nodding, as he'd likely slice his throat open if he did. "So he knows..."

"No, and if you could just remove me, then he'll never have to."

Ethan blinked at him. "Um, you know, if I do that, you'll cease to exist?"

Sweeney just cocked an eyebrow at him. "I hadn't considered oblivion. It seems fitting. Although, if you can't manage that, then I am quite willing to go back to Hell."

"You...you were in Hell?"

Sweeney nodded. "For the last 150 years, yes. Although the 15 years before that were somewhat similar."

Ethan's mind was running at high speed as he considered a few ways to remove Mr. Todd from the boy, but none of them were anything he could do just now. All of them required some time to set up and without further information they might not even work. As far as he knew, once the spell was over all the possessing entities should have gone. Sure, there would probably be memories left behind, but not enough that a whole person would still exist.

"Well?"

Ethan hesitated for a moment, then spoke, figuring he was damned either way. "I don't know how to get you out of there." He took in a startled breath as he felt the blade part his skin. "But, I can find out," he added quickly.

Mr. Todd took a step back from him, removing the blade at his throat. Ethan touched his hand to where it had been and looked rather disturbed to see his fingers covered in blood. He looked at the boy who was also looking at Ethan's fingers, only the smirk on his face was far too amused for the Chaos Mage's liking.

"You can find out, you say?"

Ethan nodded, wincing at the slight pain in his throat. "Yes. I'll need to look over the spell again..." He trailed off as he thought of something. "I'll probably have to trace the costume's origins as well, they were a little odd. Given what I was using them for I hadn't really cared, but it could have contributed to," he waved his hand towards Mr. Todd, "to whatever is going on here."

"Very well." The boy turned to go, but hesitated a moment. "Mr. Rayne?"

"Ah, is this where you threaten me should I attempt to leave you hanging in the wind or worse, attempt to use your situation to my advantage." Ethan asked flippantly, but took a step back as Mr. Todd smiled once more.

"Exactly, so please keep in mind that, while I'm not the baker Mrs. Lovett was, we never had costumer to serve and I'd try my best to make sure you were delicious."

Ethan swallowed, hard. "Got it. Um, I'll be in contact with you when I can... It may take a few weeks until I know anything."

Sweeney sighed, obviously annoyed with that piece of news, but merely nodded his understanding before turning to leave.

"Uh, what will you be doing until then?"

Sweeney turned back to Ethan and shrugged. "I don't really know, but for now I guess I'll go back to the boy's place and finish the laundry."

"Laundry?" Ethan asked, his voice a little higher pitched than he'd meant it to be.

"Well, if I don't do it now, I'll never get the blood out." He left the shop, leaving Ethan standing there, wondering just how much trouble he'd gotten himself into this time.


	2. Chapter 2

Author's note: Wow, only 2 years and 2 days since I put up chapter 1. Oww. Sadly I'm not a 100 percent happy with it (are we ever?), but if I don't stop poking at it I will go not so quietly insane and it'll be another year before I'd get around to posting it.

For disclaimer please see Part 1

Razor Cut Smile: A Yet Another Halloween Fanfiction

By Colleen

Part 2

The day after Halloween did at least have the decency to be a Saturday. Even with the memory altering advantages of Sunnydale syndrome working in their favour, a lot of people were trying to drown out the nightmare of the night before with a good bout of dreamless sleeping in. Wishful thinking perhaps, but they did try.

Xander tried extra hard. Therefore it was a little after one in the afternoon before he cracked an eye open to start his day. Still half asleep he stumbled into the bathroom, to do bathroom things. A rub at his chin told him he should really shave this morning and after lathering up his face he removed the stubble with a few deft strokes of his razor.

He looked at his reflection in the sink mirror, noticing that he'd finally managed to shave without nicking himself for a change. He turned on the water to rinse out his razor and looked down at it, expecting to see the usual crappy disposable he always used. He dropped it into the sink with a musical clang and backed away from it like it had suddenly sprouted fangs and tried to bite him.

It was one of the straight razors from the Sweeney Todd costume.

"Okay, don't panic, there's a perfectly good reason for this."

Right.

He carefully reached over the sink and turned the water off, jerking back once he'd done so, as if he were expecting the razor to leap out of the basin and attack him. Hey, this was the Hellmouth and anything was possible, even the improbable.

Hell, especially the improbable.

Leaving the razor in the sink he went back into his room and looked down at the empty space of floor next to his bed, that should have been covered in the bloody clothing from last night. A further look around his room showed that the costume's boots were tucked neatly under his dresser, the belt with an empty holster and the strop were hanging from two of the drawer handles and the gloves were sitting next to the box of razors. He opened the box. Six razors lay in their niches, an empty space at the bottom showing where the blade in the sink would normally live.

He closed the box and looked around his room again, realizing for the first time since he'd woken up that the space was neater than usual. Even the clothes that he'd worn the day before at school had disappeared from the chair he'd left them on yesterday. A quick look into his clothes hamper showed it was empty, and he sat back down on his bed, his body shaking with relief.

His mom had obviously started her Thanksgiving Day/Christmas efficiency bout early this year and had come in while he was sleeping and made off with the laundry. For the next couple of months she would be a cleaning demon, one that even the wisest of men would fear to cross. Being scarce would be the order of the day, unless he wanted to get caught up in washing windows or scrubbing bathtubs.

He could only thank whatever powers there might be that this domestic hell only happened for a couple of months a year. Because, in some sort of contrast to the cleaning, his parents tempers would get shorter and shorter until they would finally explode in a drunken argument on Christmas Eve. Not that they didn't get drunk and argue during the rest of the year, it was just that the Holiday argument was always the worst. Come Christmas Day they would be hung over and exhausted and their usual life of slothful semi cleaning would be reinstated until November of the next year.

It was really strange, therefore, to be comforted by the fact that nothing odder than his families usual weirdness was going on. Though he guessed he'd take that over being possessed by a close to 200 year old serial killer.

He went back to the bathroom and grabbed a quick shower, remembering to fish the razor out of the sink once he was done. He cleaned the blade carefully and once back in his room he put it away with the other razors. Although he really wasn't sure why, he had a great deal of respect for the razors, even if a large part of him thought he should find a plot of hallowed ground and bury them. He closed the box and decided to just not think about them, in pretty much the same way he'd decided to not think about who he'd been last night.

When he did remember, the clearest, most vibrant memory, or memories, were a long list of pulling the blade of one of those razors across someone else's throat, starting with Pirelli and ending with the costumed vampire that had invaded Buffy's house last night. He shoved even the thought of that thought away and got dressed, pulling clothing out of his closet at random. So it was that he ended up in blue jeans and a blue and orange Hawaiian shirt covered in sea shells and surfers. He grabbed his wallet and keys and stuffed them into his pockets as he headed quietly downstairs. A look through the rooms on the main floor showed the start of the cleaning frenzy to come. Furniture was pulled away from the walls in the living room. Cleaning supplies were ready and laid out on the counter in the kitchen and the vacuum cleaner stood as a single sentinel in the dining room.

Sounds of determined scrubbing came from the main floor bathroom, identifying where his mom was at the moment.

Xander made a quick dash into the kitchen. He grabbed a package of Twinkies out of a cupboard and a can of Coke out of the fridge before heading down to the basement. Normally he would have made for the back door and freedom, but he had to know for certain what had happened to the costume.

Once down there he could hear the dryer spinning away with what was probably it's last load, given that there weren't any piles of dirty clothes on the ground near it. A peak into the washer showed that it was empty and a look through the clean clothes hanging up on the rack next to the dryer proved that everything but the costume was there. The stuff in the dryer turned out to be towels.

Xander looked around, perplexed. The costume had to be here somewhere, it couldn't just get up and walk out on it's own.

At least, he didn't think it could.

It wasn't until he decided to go sit on the old hide-a-bed and eat his 'breakfast' that he finally found it. There, next to the old crappy TV and VCR they kept in the basement was a collapsible wooden drying rack, covered in the pants, shirt, vest and barbering coat.

He lifted the left arm of the barbering coat and looked it over. "I'll be damned, she actually managed to get the blood out," he said, with a shake of his head.

He gave his head a rub and another shake at the feeling that part of him had given a snort of derision at that statement. Despite how late it was in the day, he wondered if he hadn't gotten up too early after all.

Ah, maybe he was just hungry.

With that in mind he stuffed one of the Twinkies in his mouth and popped open the can of soda and took a huge swallow.

-oooo-

Something inside of Xander shuddered, but it, or rather he, was careful to not let that sensation leak through to the boy. He shuddered again as Xander ate the second Twinkie and drank more of the Coke. Sweeney didn't know what that wretched yellow cake and fizzing drink were, but he almost (almost) would have rather eaten one of Mrs. Lovett's pies, from before she improved the recipe.

-oooo-

Feeling much better after finally having something to eat, Xander made his escape out of the basement door and headed off to see how the girls were doing after last night.

-oooo-

Willow's day was shaping up to be rather painful. She'd managed a much earlier wake up time than Xander, but was beginning to wish that she'd just stood in bed. Her first act of the day had been to walk into her closed bedroom door. She ended up on her butt, staring up at the door while trying to wrap her mind around the fact that she needed to open it, before she could go through it.

Things didn't improve much from there.

By the time Xander showed up in the afternoon she had a number of minor injuries. She had barked her shins against three different pieces of furniture, smacked her right hand into two different walls and had firmly knocked the air out of herself when she'd tried to walk through the dining room table. On top of that she kept on not believing she could actually pick up or open things. When Xander rang the doorbell it took her a good thirty seconds to believe that she was actually holding on to the doorknob, before she was able to work herself up to turning it.

Xander looked at her, concerned, once she did open the door. "Hey Wills, you okay?"

He suddenly found himself with an armful of Willow. "No, no I'm not, I keep running into things and I keep thinking that I'm dead and I keep forgetting that I can touch things and oh my gosh I actually hugged you and knew I could which is something I didn't think I'd be able to do if I'd actually thought about it so maybe I'm thinking to much about it and maybe..."

"Breathe Willow!" Xander said, almost shouting. "You're definitely alive and solid and alive and solid people need to breathe."

She sucked in a breath, wheezing slightly as she did.

Xander all but dragged her into the house and sat her down on a couch in the living room. He took a seat next to her, slightly stunned. To think that he was in a panic all because he'd picked up and shaved with one of the razors this morning. What Willow was going through was far more serious. Obviously none of them were going to shake off what had happened last night in just a few hours.

He really hoped Buffy wasn't having quite as bad a time as they were.

-oooo-

Well Buffy wasn't hurting or scaring herself, but she was getting annoyed with herself. She was currently dressed in the most demure, flowery, girly girl thing she owned and had spent the morning wishing she could have scones, clotted cream and strawberry jam for tea. She didn't even know what clotted cream was, other than disgusting sounding, and yet she had the worst craving for it.

She just hoped that whatever this was wore off soon, as she also kept having the strange desire to find a needle and thread and embroider something.

Something with roses, perhaps?

-oooo-

In the end, as Willow was a little uncomfortable with going out, given she'd be even more likely to injure herself out there, they settled on calling Buffy, who let them know what was happening with her. She also told them she'd talked with Giles and he'd passed on the information that, given the spell he thought had been used, they'd be fine. Although they would probably have memory flashbacks for the next few days. He wanted them to meet with him on Monday, in the library at lunch, so he could see how they were all doing and make sure there wouldn't be any lasting problems.

-oooo-

"So," Giles asked, taking a good look at the three teenagers as they sat around the library table, "I take it that you have all recovered from Halloween?"

Buffy frowned at him and dug into her school bag. She pulled out a small throw pillow, embroidered with a single centre rose with a vine of green leaves sewn in as edging. She handed it to him with a small glare.

"Ah, yes, well, things like that will probably fade away in the next week or so."

"It had better."

"Willow, how have you been? Any problems with having been...well, you know."

Willow nodded, "Yeah , but I've stopped trying to walk through things, of course I think it'll be a few weeks before the bruises fade."

"Ah, yes." He turned to Xander. "How about you?"

"I'm good."

Giles frowned at him, not quite believing him. Mostly because Xander rarely went for the simple answer when a longer and stranger one would do.

"You know, I don't believe I heard what you went as."

Xander looked at him a little startled. "Oh, uh, right. I went as...as an old fashioned barber."

"That's...different."

Xander shrugged, "That Ethan guy, he gave me a good deal on it. Should have known better."

"So, have you noticed anything?"

Xander shrugged again. "Nothing much. I've gotten better at shaving and video games, but those are about the only differences.

"Video games?" Giles asked, disbelief in his voice.

"Uh, yeah. See, the guy wasn't just your average barber, he was like the best barber on the planet. You know, the type of barber who could shave the fuzz off of a ripe peach and not even crease the skin of it.

Giles and the two girls were looking at him like he'd completely lost it.

Xander coughed, slightly embarrassed. "He had way better hand-eye coordination than I do, er, did and hand-eye is important for good game play."

"Ah, so other than that you haven't noticed anything odd?"

"No, not really. Willow has had a much harder time of it than I have."

Giles nodded, "Quite."

-oooo-

Xander wasn't exactly lying when he'd said he hadn't observed anything different about himself since Halloween. Sure, there were little things, and he'd mentioned them…mostly.

Yes he did have better hand eye coordination now. Better spatial awareness ditto. Better fine motor control, all part of the package. And strangely his mechanical aptitude, which had been passable, was now exact. All he had to do was look at a collection of parts, or pieces, or what have you and he could almost feel how they should fit together. If this had surprised him it had delighted his uncle. He couldn't have been happier when Xander had stopped by his place on Sunday for a visit and gave him a hand doing some engine work on the old Bel Air convertible.

So it was just little things.

Okay, so he also kept having this weird on again off again feeling, like someone was always in the room with him, even if he was the only one in the house at the time. Also, he'd watched a movie last night, one he'd seen many, many times and yet it felt like part of him had never seen it. Or maybe it was more like he'd gotten someone to watch it with him who had never seen it before?

Still, that was just a feeling and a feeling was nothing compared to the barber's memories. Memories that he kept locked up in his head and refused to look at. Which worked alright during the day, but night was starting to become a different matter.

But hey, Giles said they'd have the memories for a few days, and given who he'd been a few bad dreams were probably to be expected. They'd fade away with the memories soon enough.

Right?

-oooo-

On Monday night, Sweeney went out.

He'd tried, he really had tried to stay in the back of the boy's mind, but he was going to go mad soon if he didn't do something. Well, madder than usual. Given that he was already having thoughts about ending Mrs. Harris' cleaning fetish in a very permanent manner, he thought he'd better find some other way to relieve his frustrations. Once Xander was asleep Mr. Todd took over, mentally pushing the sleeping teenager into a deeper and quieter place where he wouldn't be woken up.

Firmly in control Sweeney set about dressing.

Xander had stuffed the, what he considered to be a costume and what Sweeney considered to be his clothes, into the back of his closet. Sweeney grumbled to himself, the boy's closet had to be the only thing that still hadn't been cleaned in the whole house. It took a few minutes but he finally managed to find them and dig them free. He got dressed, relishing the fit and the black and white nature of his clothing. Not that the boy's clothing wasn't comfortable, but he greatly feared that one day the clashing riot of colours would cause his eyeballs to melt in self defence.

He put on the barbering coat as well, as the nights were getting fairly cool, making a mental note to see if there wasn't some way to get his leather coat back from Miss Cordelia. He chose two razors from their box, checking the blades over and gave each of them a couple of passes over the strop before placing them into the holster on his belt.

The box of razors were the only part of the costume that Xander hadn't tried to hide away. Sweeney wasn't sure if he was somehow influencing the boy to leave them out or if the lad himself felt a need to have them close to hand. Either way he was just glad he didn't have to dig through the closet for them as well.

-oooo-

The night air on his face and in his lungs were like ambrosia. The air in London was a stagnant smoke and dung filled pit in comparison and much of his time in Australia had been spent underground in even worse air. The only time he remembered air as fresh had been when he was on board ship and during the picnic that Mrs. Lovett had dragged him off on. At the time he hadn't really appreciated it, but then most of his thoughts had been busy with trying to find a way to get to the judge.

Quick light footsteps behind him broke him out of his retrospection and he turned towards them in time to have a small boy, about eight or nine years old, plough into him. The child let out a strangled sort of gasp and leapt away from him. He looked up at Mr. Todd and let out another gasp before backing away further.

Sweeney knew, from checking in the mirror, that when he had control Xander's complexion appeared to pale and his hair became a bit wilder and a bit curlier. It wasn't as severe as he'd looked when alive, but it was probably different enough to make an already scared child even more frightened.

"What are you doing out at this time of night lad?"

"I...I was running home," the boy said, eyes wide and fearful.

Sweeney nodded slightly and stepped to the side. "Then you should be on your way."

Still obviously scared the boy sidled around him and took off down the street. Sweeney watched him for a bit before he turned to continue his walk in the direction that the boy had come from, wondering as he did just what the lad had been running home from.

-oooo-

Sweeney's walk rambled on for over two hours through empty parks, empty graveyards and empty streets. It was an introspective brooding walk, but it was a chance to move and breathe and do all those other things that he couldn't do without a body... Without Xander's body.

He hoped Rayne came up with something soon, as he'd much rather be dead, although not enough to actually kill himself, and the boy along with him. Even though he had pretty much bared his throat so Toby could kill him, he wasn't particularly fond of the idea of suicide. Of course there were other ways to get yourself killed, especially in a place like Sunnydale.

He shook his head at the thought. It was obvious that he should get Xander's body home before he did something incredibly stupid with it...

A car pulled up to the curb beside him.

"Well looky here, it's a drive through happy meal."

Something stupid like walk around Sunnydale at night.

The vampire lunged through the open passenger side car window at him and for Sweeney the world slowed down. He pulled a razor from the holster and had it opened moments before the bloodsucker was able to latch onto his left arm. The vampire pulled on him and Sweeney used that to add power to his swing, turning with it and going, as always, for the throat.

Just as on Halloween night there was no way to get out of the way of the spray of blood. The vampire must have been exceedingly greedy, as by the amount of gore he would have had to have already fed at least once this night.

Mr. Todd got a liberal dousing of the stuff, although given the angle it mostly hit him from his chest on down. It actually wasn't as bad as it would have been if the man had been human, as vampires start to heal very quickly, unless they'd been hurt enough to actually turn to dust, something he had yet to see, but had heard the three teenagers talking about earlier.

Still, quick healing or not, the cut did have the desired effect of making the thing let go of him. Startled swearing from the driver's side of the car and the sound of tires losing more rubber than was really good for them followed as the car leapt away from the curb, the vampire in the passenger window gurgling away as he tried to hold his throat closed while it healed.

Sweeney watched them leave with a glower on his face. He really was going to have to figure out how to follow through on killing a vampire, it was very annoying that they just kept on keeping on. He returned to his walk, taking off his barbering coat as he did. He used it to clean the razor, since a little more blood would hardly hurt the thing and he hadn't brought a cloth with him. Once he was satisfied with the blade he put it away and shook out the coat to get a better look at it. The expression on his face pure murder as he did so.

He was going to have to do the laundry, again.

-oooo-

The next morning Xander found himself stiff and sore. He did a few careful stretches and wondered what he had been doing the day before that left him feeling like he'd gone for a long walk before... he tested the soreness in his arms and shoulders... before rowing a boat was the closest activity he could come up with for the rest of the way he felt.

He had also slept in. He made a quick trip to and from the bathroom and then pulled on a red, long sleeved sports shirt and a pair of yellow and black checked pants. He took a quick look in the mirror on his closet door once he was dressed.

'_Ah, I __**have**__ gone blind!'_

Xander whipped around to look for the owner of the voice he'd just heard. Sure, he normally would have been able to see someone behind him in the mirror, but this was Sunnydale, and despite the fact that it was morning that didn't mean one of the reflectively challenged wasn't currently standing behind him.

Nothing.

"Hello?"

No answer, but Xander had the creeped out feeling that there was someone there, they just weren't saying anything. Only there wasn't any place in his room they could be hiding. Not even under the bed, as he had a load of miscellaneous junk stored under it.

He was considering looking under it anyway when a loud banging at his door caused him to jump, almost plastering him to the ceiling.

"Get the hell up and get to school."

Well, Dad was in good voice this morning.

-oooo-

Ah, school. Was there anything more mind numbing, not to mention butt numbing? If it hadn't been for Cordelia's take on the French Revolution the day would have been a total loss. So of course it had to go down hill from there when an old friend of Buffy's showed up. It was bad enough that there was no way he was going to win against Angel for Buffy's affections, but now he had the added problem of her old crush to deal with.

Dealing with him was perhaps the wrong way to think about it because his mind made the suggestion that if he did the cuts right that old Ford could be chalked up as another victim of those terrible gang members hopped up on PCP. The very thought made him ill, and yet some part of him seemed almost...happy that he'd come up with it. Damn, maybe he should go to Giles and tell him exactly who he'd gone as at Halloween, because it seemed to be getting worse, not better.

He shook both thoughts away as he returned home and changed for the Bronze, warily checking himself in the mirror. When no voice commented on his clothing one way or the other he let out a sigh of relief and collected his keys and wallet before heading out.

The fact that he'd also pocketed one of the razors, and had done so almost every time he went out, well he wouldn't be noticing that for a while yet.

-oooo-

Xander came home after Bronzing in a slightly depressed mood. The entire night had been a damn shame. The one time he'd probably ever get to watch Angel being blown off by Buffy and he hadn't been able to enjoy it at all.

It had been sad and painful, although not quiet at a level that would require country music to help wallow in it. Worse, if Angel hadn't done that thing were he was gone Xander might have gone as far as to commiserate with him. The very thought made him shudder.

Xander walked into the living room and plopped down on the couch, not quite ready to go upstairs and go to bed. He came close to knocking over a pile of videos that sat on the coffee table as he put his feet up on it. Odd, this room was immaculate, the video's were the only thing out of place. He sat up and took a look at them, almost laughing out loud as he noticed the top film was Cinderella, his mom's favourite Disney film of all time. If Dad was already renting movies like this to try to keep Mom busy, then he was desperate, and cleaning season had only just begun.

Idly Xander began to shift through the films. It was unfortunate that Mom tended towards musicals rather than action films, otherwise they could have watched them together. Somehow, though, he didn't think he could sit through, 'An American in Paris' or 'My Fair Lady' or...

He looked at the third video box and froze, his mouth going dry as he read the title. He put the other two video's down and reached to pick it up. His hand came within a few inches of it before he pulled it back. He continued to stare at the video on the coffee table for a good five minutes before he abruptly stood and headed to bed, determined to ignore the film.

There was no way in Hell he was going to watch the theatrical production of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, he had enough bad memories and dreams with what was in his head. He didn't need to see it brought to life on a stage.

So why was part of him practically screaming at him to turn around and play the thing?

It didn't matter, he would ignore it and go to bed. He didn't want or need to see the thing.

Not surprisingly it took Xander a lot longer to fall asleep than usual that night.

-oooo-

Even though he'd only been stuck here a few days Sweeney already knew exactly what those boxes Xander had been looking at were. The boy had already played several of the moving picture plays over the weekend. He considered getting up and going back down stairs to watch the thing himself, but in the end he couldn't bring himself to do it.

Just the very fact that his life had somehow been made into a form of entertainment both sickened and appalled him.

He refused to admit to himself that it also scared him, as much as he could be scared. Even after all this time he found he was afraid of what he might learn of that time, of the secrets that might still lurk, waiting with a predator's stillness to be uncovered before attacking.

No, whatever was in that box he would not be watching it, ever.

He didn't know it, but somewhere, a being of power was laughing its head off.

-oooo-

The next day Xander was once again running late and was unable to give the video much thought until after he was already at school. If classes had been even the slightest bit interesting he might have been able to not think about the film for a whole five minutes, but even that length of time was denied him by the sheer boredom that was Sunnydale High. A boredom that really shouldn't have existed given that death, dismemberment or worse was the constant threat that just attending the school left one open to.

Proof that one could get use to anything, except the horror that is algebra.

After school he actually did his homework in an attempt to not think about the musical and he probably would have had to come up with something painful and ridiculous to do to continue to not think about it after dinner if Willow hadn't phoned him and told him that Angel had asked her to look into Buffy's old beau and needed some help checking something out. He was more than happy to help by that point.

Xander met up with Willow and Angel by the movie theatre and while he wasn't all that happy to see the brooding wonder he wasn't about to complain about anything that got him out of the house that night. Unfortunately none of them owned a car so they were forced to walk while Willow filled them in about what she did, or didn't find out about Ford.

"It's like as far as Sunnydale is concerned he doesn't exist. No school records, no new job for his father, no address. I did manage to get his e-mail address and hack it, but the only thing I was able to track down from that were some e-mails to a guy called Diego at this address," she said as she waved her hand toward a building that looked like it had been designed to hunker down in during a nuclear attack. The walls were solid concrete and the upper windows appeared to have been bricked up recently, if the condition of the mortar was anything to go by. "It's called the Sunset Club. I wasn't able to find anything incriminating about it or Ford though."

Angel stared at the building and shook his head. "He leaves no paper trail, no real records. That's incriminating enough."

"I'm gonna have to go with Dead Boy on this one, Will." Xander shook his head in mild denial about agreeing with Angel on anything.

"Could you not call me that?"

"What, and give up on something that annoys you?"

Angel grimaced slightly, but chose to ignore Xander as he knocked on the building's reinforced steel door. A little window in it slid open and a pair of eyes looked out.

"We're friends of Ford's. He said we should come by." Angel said, making it sound like it was a password to a speakeasy.

The eyes held theirs for a beat and Xander, in a sudden flash back to Halloween, had the insane desire to ask whoever was behind those eyes if he fancied a shave. He didn't get the chance though, as the little window suddenly slid shut and the door opened.

-oooo-

It only took a few minutes to experience the joys of the Sunset Club and their 'Vampires Yay' mentality, then the three of them were once again outside its doors. Xander wondered if the slight pain behind his eyes was the start of a normal headache or if his mind simply hurt from running head first into a mass collective of undaunted stupidity.

How could anyone live on the Hellmouth and not feel the truth about vampires? Even if most of the citizens of Sunnydale never opened their eyes or minds far enough to actually understand what was out there they still took precautions that people in other towns didn't. Sure people still did stupid things and got killed or turned, but a lot of them also instinctively knew not to verbally invite anyone into their homes, they knew not to put out a welcome mat, crosses were popular home decorating items, and, strangest of all, no one in Sunnydale actually owned a barbeque fork.

Oh well, if everyone in the club eventually ended up dead by vampire it wouldn't be much of a loss, and if they were turned they would probably be fairly incompetent as vampires as well. Easy pickings.

Xander winced and shook his head. Where the hell had that thought come from? Sure he thought most of the people in there were idiots, but that didn't mean they deserved to die.

Except that everyone deserved to die.

"Xander?"

Xander looked up at Willow's call and realized that she and Angel had gotten close to a half a block ahead of him. He gave his head another shake and headed off after them, determined to worry about whatever was going on with Ford and Buffy and not with what was going on in his own mind.

-oooo-

When Xander got home that evening his parents were out and that damn video tape was still sitting on the coffee table. Trust his father to rent everything from the seven day section. He went into the kitchen and grabbed a can of Mountain Dew out of the fridge and a bag of cheese doodles out of a cupboard and sat down at the kitchen table. Five minutes later he still hadn't opened the drink nor the snack and with a semi scream of annoyance he tossed the cheese doodles back into the cupboard and picked up the drink before heading back to the living room.

The video tape sat there, pretending to be innocent, while in reality it felt as if it were cousin to Pandora's Box. If he opened it he might let everything loose, with not even hope remaining after.

But he had to see, needed to know even. That life he had seen at Halloween had been too real, he needed to know that it was just a fiction. Something played out on a stage where at the end all the dead stood up and took their bows.

He picked up the tape.

Since his parents could be home at any time he opted for the less comfortable, but more private ratty basement couch and crappy TV and video machine that they had down there. He headed down, turned on the machines, slotted the film in, sat down on the couch and finally popped the top on his soda before he found the remote and hit play.

At first it went fairly well. While he had to translate the difference between a stage play and real life, plus the fact that no one looked right and they kept breaking out into song, events did move along at a very familiar pace.

Some things he hadn't known about, like Anthony making time with his daughter, or rather Sweeney's daughter, although he should have guessed as there had to be some reason the boy would suddenly want to run away with her. The Judge was as vile as he always believed him to be. Mrs. Lovett as played by Angela Lansbury was a lot more broadly comic than the woman in his memories, though that woman did have her moments. It was also always hard to think of her without thinking of her betrayal and all that had been wasted by it.

The boy, Toby, didn't really match at all.

But the worst of all of them was Lucy, more insane and vile than Todd had ever noticed the grey swathed beggar woman being. Xander had to wonder just how much of this did match up with the memories he had and how much had been changed for entertainment.

Point in case, while he felt strangely proud of Johanna when she shot Mr. Fogg, late of the asylum, the image of her doing so didn't match up with what Todd had learned of her through Anthony and the Judge. Still, in his youth Benjamin Barker would never have been expected to be the killer that he had become by giving up his name for another.

In a way it was an annoying film to watch, all in all. It was rather like seeing a documentary about someone you knew and picking out all the parts they got wrong. Xander had begun to think about just turning it off, as it was already running full tilt towards the very painful end.

And then Johanna, dressed in boy's clothing, hid in a trunk in the barber shop.

Xander sat upright from the position he had slumped into during the viewing and felt all of the saliva dry up in his mouth. He gave his head a shake as the sense of something thick slid up the inside of his skull and around to the front of it to dig into his eyeballs.

Todd killed his wife, not knowing it was her and Xander watched the scene with a snarl and a grimace that felt distinctly alien on his face. His body relaxed a bit when stage Sweeney killed the Judge. And then...

And then...

And then Xander found himself standing in front of the TV, without having moved himself, his mouth formed words that came out in his voice, but with an accent that wasn't his.

"No! No damn it all to shit, I almost killed both of them."

On the screen Todd pulled Johanna from the trunk and only Mrs. Lovett's screams stopped her from meeting her mother's fate. Although on the screen she used the distraction to injure the barber and escape, Xander could clearly remember in his Halloween memories that Todd had instead warned the boy, who was no boy, to silence, before letting him/her go.

Of course that might have mattered more to Xander if he were actually the one in control of his body at the moment.

Xander's body picked up the still half full can of Mountain Dew and with a scream threw it at the nearest wall where it hit with a thud and a splash of foaming liquid. He reached down and grabbed the coffee table, heaving it aside so strongly that he flipped it over end to end, which was impressive as the thing was a very solid relic of the seventies.

All this time Xander was screaming and mentally beating his fists against whatever it was that was holding him prisoner in his own body. The noise he was creating, inside, was probably the only reason his body didn't put his fist through the television, and instead it collapsed back on the couch, panting.

But he still didn't have control.

He struggled, but it didn't even seem to fizz on whatever it was that held him as he was forced to watch to the end of the film. This was much the same as remembered, although he thought it unlikely that the Toby the memories had know had gone that insane. The boy had grown up in the work houses and if he had survived that and Pirelli he could survive Todd and Lovett and taking his revenge on the former for the latter's death.

And finally the dead got up and took their bows.

-oooo-

Sweeney let the end of the film wash over him, barely noticing as it happened. Almost everything he had ever touched had turned to shit, and it was only the dumbest of luck and a moments hesitation that had saved that one last good part of his past from joining it.

He could only hope that the reason it had never been used against him in that place he had been after was because Johanna and Anthony had gone on to make something of their lives. They would never have shown him something with hope attached to it, unless they could strip it from him in the end.

Todd looked up to watch as theatrical Todd took his bows and later stalked away from Mrs. Lovett, resurrected to take her bows. He left the stage, slamming the door behind him to leave her in the dark.

Which was when he suddenly noticed something else slamming, only it was in his head.

No, it was in Xander's head.

Shit.

-oooo-

Xander suddenly found himself on the floor, gasping like he'd run a marathon. He peeled himself off of the concrete and ran his hands over his body, almost delirious with relief as it was he, himself who was moving his hands. He collapsed back onto the couch and tried to figure out what in hell was going on.

'_That ought to be fairly obvious.' _A rather rusty, almost tired voice, with an English accent, seemed to say in his ear.

"Ahhhh!"

Xander, eyes wide, darted looks around the room. "Who are you, where are you?"

'_Again, that ought to be fairly obvious.'_

Xander swallowed thickly as he realized that the voice wasn't actually outside of himself. "You're inside me, aren't you? Damn it, why am I always the one getting possessed?"

'_Hobby, perhaps?' _

"Funny." Xander stood carefully and started to sidle sideways to the basement's outside door. He bumped into the drying rack that sat in the shadows near it and felt his mouth dry up a second time that evening when he saw the Sweeney Todd costume laid out on it, again.

"Why are these thing here?"

'_I had to wash them last night.'_

Why would whatever was possessing him need that costume? Xander had barely thought the question out before the answer followed with all the power of a jet plane breaking the sound barrier.

"Oh, God, you're Sweeney Todd. I thought it was just memories, but you're still in there, aren't you?"

'_Yes.'_

"Why?"

'_I don't know!'_

"Well, get out!" Xander started to pant and suspected he would soon be utilizing his God given right to hyperventilate.

'_You'll pass out if you keep that up.'_

"Good."

It almost felt like someone inside of him shrugged. _'Then I should let you know. When you're unconscious I have complete control of your body.'_

Xander stopped breathing, then restarted with a strangled gasp and a cough. "Yeah, well not for long." He looked at the costume and frowned. "Why did you wash these again, anyway?"

'_I had to get the blood out.'_

Xander's vision greyed out and he found himself on his hands and knees, with a voice in his head yelling at him to _'breathe, damn it.'_

"Who..." He sat back on his knees as he swallowed the Buick that suddenly seemed lodged in his throat. "Who was it."

Silence.

"Who was it!" Xander yelled, before an even more horrible thought crossed his mind.

"How many?" He asked, quietly, eyes wide.

'_The blood was from a vampire.'_

Xander slid the rest of the way to lie flat on the floor, suddenly boneless with relief.

"You killed a vampire?"

There was a snorting sound in his head. _'No, only wounded. They bleed nicely when they're full, but I don't seem to have much luck killing them.'_

"Wooden stake to the heart, or decapitation, or fire, or sunlight." Xander reeled off, almost without thought.

'_Rather fragile, aren't they?'_

It was Xander's turn to snort. "Have to say I've never thought of them that way before." He pulled himself back up to his knees. "Was that the only one?"

'_What?'_

"Was that the only..?" Xander squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, then continued. "Was the vampire the only person, thing..? Whatever, that you've tried to kill, or have killed... or..?"

'_The vampire was the only thing I have taken my blade to since Halloween.'_

Xander sighed in relief and stood up, weaving slightly. "And I'm going to make sure it stays that way." He got as far as to put his hand on the doorknob when he felt his body freeze in place.

"Let... Me... Go." Xander said, forcing the words out of reluctant lips.

'_Not until you tell me your intentions.'_

Xander felt his body loosen enough so he didn't have to force speech. "Oh, I thought a nice walk, get the blood circulating before heading to bed, you know?"

'_Alexander.'_

"Fine, you want to know my intentions? My intentions are to go to Buffy and Giles and get them to find a way to get you the hell out of me." Xander grimaced, if he could have moved properly he would have thunked his head into the door as soon as he'd said that. He was officially screwed. Why, oh why, couldn't he learn to control his mouth, especially when he was panicking?

A breath of a sigh with a pinch of humour in it. _'Very well, but it is getting late, I would suggest taking more weapons than just the one razor you have in your pocket.'_

And just like that, he was free.

He turned the knob, and then froze, this time by his own will.

"What razor?"

'_Front right hand pocket.'_

Xander reached into his pocket like he expected it to be loaded with a mouse trap and very carefully pulled out one of the silver handled straight razors. He flicked it open, taking note that it was one of the mid-sized blades while striving to ignore just how terrified his reflection was as it was cast back at him by the shining metal. He closed it with an easy motion, wincing as he realized just how natural it felt to handle the thing.

"How many other things have you made me do that I don't know about?"

'_None, you've been pocketing one of the blades every morning since Halloween, I didn't have anything to do with it.'_

Xander shook his head. "No, no I wouldn't just..."

'_You did.' _Another sigh, this one mixed with exasperation. _'It's already closing on midnight. You might want to consider getting help in the morning.'_

Xander's laugh was desperate, bordering on hysterical. "Right, like you'll just quietly spend the night in there and let me try to get rid of you come morning."

'_I don't damn well want to be in your mind and body any more than you want me here! I've already got the mage looking for a way to get me out, if you think your friends have a better chance at it, then by all means, let them try.' _Xander jumped slightly when the voice out and out growled. _'Either way, this is more conversation than I've had to indulge in, in more than a century and a half. It's very tiring.'_

"Hey, wait, what mage?" Xander could swear he felt something pull back from his mind and close itself off. "Hey."

Nothing.

"Stupid, body stealing, 19th century, blood thirsty, barber." Xander looked at the outside door, then down at the razor in his hand. With a sigh of his own he pocketed the blade and turned towards the basement stairs. He doubted he'd be getting much sleep, but he suspected that it would be safer to wait until morning so he didn't have to contend with vampires on top of being possessed. He didn't trust his guest any further than he could drop kick the entire Sunnydale High football team, but given the control he had over Xander's body...

Oh, lets face it, he was screwed. A few more hours weren't going to change that.

-oooo-

Could he never catch a break? First he woke up late again, which, given he might have gotten all of two hours sleep that night wasn't much of a surprise. He also woke up queasy, again, not much of a surprise. And apparently, he woke up alone.

"Mr. Todd?"

Nothing.

"Hey, Sweeney."

Nada.

"Benjamin Barker!"

Still no voices in his head.

He started dressing, beginning to wonder if last night hadn't been a horrible dream when he heard a voice make a pained noise as he pulled on an orange t-shirt with a pair of tan pants.

"What?"

'_Have you no sense of colour coordination at all?'_

"Great, only I could get possessed by a 200 year old serieal killer with Cordelia's sense of fashion aesthetics." Damn, not a dream.

His guest didn't bother to answer and Xander got the rest of his things together and tossed a dark jacket on to complete his current ensemble before he took off out of the house at a run.

He had every intention of blowing off homeroom to head to the library and get help, but Principal Snyder was waiting in the halls when he got there and there was nothing to do but go to class. The gnome was still stalking the corridors when they got out and so he ended up going to first and second class as well. When they finally hit the morning break and he was heading back downstairs to get to the library, he found Willow sitting on the steps and sat down beside her.

"Wills, am I ever glad to see you."

What she might have replied to that he didn't know, as Buffy came up behind them at that moment and Willow shot to her feet to talk to her.

Crap, he'd completely forgotten about the problem with Ford.

'_You really should have killed him when you thought of it.'_

Xander nodded slightly. His eyes widened suddenly as he realized what he was agreeing with and unnoticed by the two girls he grabbed his head and groaned slightly. He looked back up in time to tune into the end of Willow and Buffy's conversation.

"When Angel came to my room he was just really concerned for you. And we didn't want to say anything in case we were wrong." Willow said, finishing up.

"Did you find out what Ford is up to?" Xander asked, curious now that his mind had shifted problems.

"I will." Buffy said with cold certainty before she walked off.

'_Weren't you going to tell them something?'_

Xander jumped slightly, right, possessed, need help. He turned to talk to Willow, who was still standing in front of him, when something she'd said a moment ago penetrated.

"Angel was in your bedroom?" Okay, that wasn't what he'd intended to say, but it was important none the less.

Willow nodded. "Ours is a forbidden love."

-oooo-

In the end he never got to talk to anyone. The library turned out to be closed at lunch time and a note on the door said that the librarian was away at a school board meeting. Buffy was dealing with the Ford problem and Willow, well Willow was smart and his best bud, but he didn't want to dump this on her without any backup from Buffy and Giles.

'_Just as well, babbling redheads….annoy me.'_

Xander blinked the memory of smoke and burning flesh away and sat down heavily at the kitchen table in his home, dumping his school books on the eating surface.

"If you ever hurt her…" Xander began.

'_What? What could you possibly do to me?'_

Xander breathed angrily for a few moments, then he had an idea that was purely Xander.

"If you hurt any of them, I'll pick the most annoying song I know and sing it over and over and over."

'_That's not much of a threat.'_

"Fine." Xander took a deep breath and started to sing, loudly and slightly off key. "I'm Henry the eighth I am, Henry the eighth I am I am, I got married to the widow next door, she'd"

'_Enough!'_

Xander's lips went numb and unresponsive, but that didn't stop him from continuing the song in his head.

: She'd been married seven times before and everyone was an 'Enery, never was a… : His lips came free again.

'_Alright! I'll not touch the redheaded…'_

"What ever you're about to call her, just don't."

Silence, but Xander was certain that he could feel his possessor's anger like it was a swirling mass of cloud and poisoned rain twisting across the surface of his brain. How he hadn't realized the barber was there days ago he didn't know.

-oooo-

It was infuriating to be controlled even a small amount by this colour blind, musically challenged, slab of adolescence. To be fair Sweeney had done his own level of controlling, but he rarely ever felt like being fair much these days.

On top of the annoyance, he was exhausted. Holding Xander's body when the boy was awake and fighting proved to be harder to do than he'd thought. Given his emotional state last night he hadn't noticed the strain it had placed on him until this morning. Stopping Xander's mouth had taken everything he had left at the moment and even then he'd been a hair's breadth away from losing control over it before he'd let go to stop that, that retched melody from continuing to play in his mind.

Gods, but that mage had better find a way to get him out of this body and soon.

As Xander started to work half heartedly on his homework Sweeney ignored him and returned to the thoughts that had haunted him throughout the day.

Johanna.

He could still remember her there, cowering in his barber's chair just moments from joining her mother in death. He'd played the scene over and over again until it twisted in his mind and he saw what could have happened if Mrs. Lovett hadn't screamed at that moment. If he hadn't hesitated long enough to look into her eyes (or, as he thought at the time, his eyes) and know that unlike Toby, this child would never say anything of what had happened…

The idea of being covered in her blood…Xander was lucky he didn't have the strength to take control or the boy would have been more than just queasy today. It was, he realized, ironic to be so affected by imaginary blood, as he rarely even noticed when he got splattered by the real thing.

Sweeney hated irony. And yet he had the odd sense that he was going to be running into it, a lot.

-oooo-

Willow called a little while later, passing on a message from Buffy to meet her at the Sunset Club at sunset and come prepared for vampires. Xander's parents came home long enough to change and leave him some money to buy pizza before they headed out to meet Uncle Rory and his latest girlfriend for dinner and way too many drinks. Xander pocketed the money, ate a bowl of cereal and got ready to go out.

-oooo-

By the time he, Willow and Angel got there it was all over. Terrified and injured people were moving away from the Sunset club as fast as they could. Buffy walked out slightly behind the rest.

"You guys are just in time."

Willow looked off behind Buffy. "Are there vampires?"

"They're contained. They'll get out eventually, though. We should probably go. We can come back when they're gone."

Xander frowned, "Come back for what?"

Buffy turned to look back at the building. "For the body."

'_I think I may be starting to understand what you see in her.'_

Xander grit his teeth, but didn't say anything. He cast an eye over the club, wondering if they couldn't just Molotov cocktail the place and be done with that bunch of vampires. He had to grimace as he realized just how solid the building was and with a slightly annoyed sound he turned to catch up with the rest of the gang before they got too far ahead of him, again.

-oooo-

Walking beside her Xander could see that Buffy was only just holding it together.

: Todd : Xander thought the barber's name, trying to get his attention.

Silence.

: Todd! :

Something snarled.

'_Don't yell!'_

: Sorry. : He waited a beat. : Could I ask you something? :

'_Grunt.'_

Well, he guessed that was a yes.

: Are you really serious about wanting out? I mean, what happens to you after? :

'_The mage says I would cease to exist.'_

Xander stumbled in shock and kept his footing only because Buffy corrected his balance with a hand to his shoulder and a quick, sad smile.

Xander nodded his thanks to her, before attempting to swallow the dry feeling in his throat away. : Why would you agree to let that happen? :

'_It would be better than Hell, and more than I deserve.'_

: Yeah, but to not be? :

'_I desire nothing more than nothing.' _Todd made a noise somewhere between a growl and a sigh. _'Why do you ask?'_

: I want to know if you would consider a truce. If just for a couple of days you would be willing to not do anything. I don't think Buffy could take another big problem at the moment. :

'_When you say anything…'_

: I mean, no late night walks, no taking over my body, no rude remarks about my clothing or my friends and especially, no killing! :

There was a full thirty seconds of silence before the barber answered him.

'_Fine, a truce, for the moment.'_

Xander let out the breath he'd been holding. He had two days, he'd better not waste them.

_-oooo-_

It was a couple of nights later and he and Willow were holding down the library while Buffy and Giles went to deal with the last of the fallout from the Ford situation. Xander had spent every moment he had the last two days looking through Giles' books, searching for anything that might help rid him of his unwanted guest. He'd even managed to get Willow doing computer searches about the Halloween spell, having suggested that it might be a good idea to have a way to counter the thing should someone ever try it again.

While Willow squinted at the screen of her laptop Xander was slowly reading what appeared to be a Watcher's journal, his face twisting further and further with disgust at every page he read. It was obvious that his Slayer hadn't been a real person to him. She'd been nothing more than a weapon, and an ill cared for one at that. Hell, on his worst day Todd had had more respect and concern for his razors than this man had for his charge.

In fact he was beginning to think that Todd had thought better of the boy Toby than this man did of the woman he was supposed to train and support through some of the worst things a person should ever have to survive.

And speaking of the barber.

'_Who in their right minds gave the care of a Slayer over to this piece of shit? And what is a Cruciamentum?'_

Xander shook his head slightly and turned the page to find out, then looked up as Giles and Buffy came in. This was it, he was finally going to tell them what was going on and get their help getting rid of Sweeney Todd.

He hesitated for a moment. Buffy looked so sad…

'_Given the life she lives, that all of you live, there will be few times that she isn't hurting from something. Get this over with.'_

Xander really hated it when Todd was right, but he didn't argue. His lips were just parting when he noticed Giles look down at the journal he'd just been reading and give a jerk of surprise, then just as suddenly relax.

"Xander, I would appreciate it if you wouldn't go manhandling my copies of the Watcher's journals, they are rather fragile."

Xander looked down at the book he was holding. "Who was this guy anyway?"

"Arwel Huws, one of the most respected Watcher's of his time."

"What?"

'_What?'_

Giles held out his hand for the book, nodding as he did so. "His records of his experiences with his Slayer are required reading for all Watcher's. Sadly I don't have time to translate it so you can read it, besides it is rather dry."

Buffy gave a laugh that had little humour in it. "Why does that not surprise me?"

Willow peered at it from over the table as a wide eyed Xander handed it over to the librarian. "Is it in Latin, because I could…"

Giles shook his head. "No, Huws only ever wrote in his native Welsh."

Xander would have said 'what' again, only something had seized control of his mouth and stopped it.

: Hey :

'_Apologies,' _Todd said, although Xander didn't really believe he was sorry. _'But, I don't think you'll be wanting Giles to know that you did understand what is writen in that thing.'_

: But how? : Xander started to ask, when a rush of memory that wasn't his own seized him.

Austrailia.

A large percentage of the men sent to the penal colonies there were actually Welsh and a lot of those men couldn't even speak English to begin with. Xander could remember Benjamin helping one of the other convicts to learn some basic English on the trip over, while at the same time learning what he could of his language. He had even kept it up once he'd been over there and fifteen years was a long time. Long enough to grind the language permanently into his mind.

: Why did you keep learning it? :

Todd was silent, but Xander waited for the answer, having gotten used to the slowness of the other man's replys.

'_It was something to keep busy with, something to drown out some of the horror at what was happening. And after I got there, it was a way to make alliances, a way to team up with others for protection.' _

Xander didn't ask if it had worked. He was certain that if he sifted the memories for himself that he would find out that it was part of the reason that Todd had survived his incarceration. However, he preferred to avoid the memories of Australia when he could, as some of the worst of his nightmares were from that period of Benjamin Barker's life and not from Sweeney Todd's life on Fleet Street.

: I didn't even realize that I wasn't reading English. And could I have my mouth back now? :

His lips came free just as Giles tucked the book under one arm, then clapped his hands and rubbed them together. "So what are the two of you so diligently researching?"

Willow nearly bounced in her seat. "The Halloween spell. We're trying to find other ways to counter it if anyone ever tries to use it again."

"Ahh," Giles replied, as he looked over Willow's shoulder and frowned at the screen of her laptop.

Buffy sat down at the table and reluctantly picked up one of the books. She looked over at Xander who appeared to have zoned out and waved a hand in front of his face. "You okay in there?"

Xander blinked and gave her a half of a grin. "Fine," he said, before returning his attention to the Watcher's journal that Giles was still holding on to.

'_I'll amend the truce.'_

: What? : Xander grimaced slightly, he was beginning to wonder if he knew any other words.

'_The mage who cast this spell is looking for a way to undo it.'_

Xander's brain scrambled to keep up with what felt like a sudden shift in subject matter.

: And you trust him? :

'_No, but I'm not sure I trust your Giles either._

Oh.

_At least not if that book is supposed to represent the best of this group he belongs to. If you still want to tell him I won't stop you, but if you feel equally as unsure as I do, then I'll extent the truce with some amendments.' _

Xander hesitated. He wanted to trust Giles, he really did and normally it would have been a non issue, but that journal had shaken him. And yet he didn't trust Todd, couldn't risk trusting him.

But.

: What amendments? :

'_Extend it time wise until Rayne or someone else can break the spell.'_

Xander nodded slightly. : Okay. :

'_I will need to move sometimes, to do things for myself. It's probably best to leave that for when you're asleep. I'll try to not to take over your body without warning when you're awake.'_

An icicle of fear slammed its way down Xander's spine at the very thought of it and he was moments from refusing right there.

'_And I insist on killing something, even if it's just vampires.'_

Okay, that part of the deal didn't sound so bad, but would Todd be satisfied just killing vampires? Somehow, Xander didn't think so. He closed his eyes for a moment in an attempt to collect his terrified little thoughts. Unbidden and unwelcome the memory of spraying blood and bodies sliding through a hole in the barber shop to land with a wet, meaty, crack and thud on the stone floor of the bake house below played through his mind. His eyes flew open again, but he wasn't really seeing anything but that memory playing over and over again.

How did he ever think he could handle this, even for the two days he had asked for and used up. He needed help, he needed help now, because there were not enough words to describe just how wrong this deal would be. He couldn't do it, he…jerked out of his memory induced panic when Giles moved, heading to the book cage.

Xander swallowed the lump in his throat as he watched the librarian carefully lock the book away. It was obvious the man really didn't want any of them looking at it, or any of the other journals stored there. Giles also didn't seem to realize that he had an audience, because just for a moment his face went hard and cold, before the affable mien the Watcher usually showed smoothed over his features like a covering shroud.

Holy Gods he couldn't believe it. He really wasn't sure he could trust Giles to help him. At this moment he wasn't even sure he could trust him with Buffy and Willow.

: Vampires, yeah. We could maybe do that. : He started slightly as he realized he was really going to make this deal with the barber.

'_And the use of your body?'_

Deep breath. He would not freak out, no matter how much he wanted to.

: With ground rules, which we will discuss. I also reserve the right to tell them what's going on at any time. :

Xander could hear his heart beating way too fast during the twenty seconds it took Todd to answer with one, simple word.

'_Agreed.'_

And somewhere in the universe the balance so many worried about wobbled, dipping first to one side, then the other, before returning back to its steady state on a narrow base under the nervously watchful eyes of the cosmos.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Sweeney Todd. They both belong to their creators and whoever else holds copyright and licensing. I'm just borrowing them for my own attempts at a YAHF. This is for entertainment purposes only and no moneys will be made from this fanfiction.

Author's note: Another chapter finally dribbles out of my brain.

Razor Cut Smile: A Yet Another Halloween Fanfiction

By Colleen

Part 3

Xander attempted to hunch down into the light jacket he was wearing and sighed out a plumy white stream of breath into the cold air.

"Are you really sure you want to try this so soon?"

'_Yes.'_

Xander frowned and looked down at the fresh grave he was standing in front of.

"Don't you think that maybe we should have done more than one patrol with Buffy before jumping in like this?"

'_No.'_

Great, one syllable answers. Not that Xander would let that deter him.

"But, don't you think that…"

'_Enough.' _

He'd gotten him up to two syllables, but Xander didn't feel like celebrating that small victory. Instead, he stopped speaking and shivered with something other than cold. Todd had promised to avoid taking over simply because he was annoyed with the teenager, but Xander had the feeling his 'guest' was a whisper away from breaking that promise.

And since having that happen even when he agreed to it still creeped him out, he managed to stay quiet for a little over half a minute.

Okay, so he had a control problem.

"I just think you might need to see her take out a few more vampires before you try it yourself." Xander braced himself as he spoke, trying rather fruitlessly to prepare himself for however the barber might react.

The man…growled. Xander winced at the sound. Sweeney was officially annoyed, although for once luck was with the teenager and he never got to find out how annoyed.

It was probably the first time that he was happy to see a vampire pop out of its grave, face demonically twisted and ready to rip his throat out.

Sweeney Todd took over and Xander let go of his body as much as he was able. They'd practiced this a few times now. It was actually a very difficult thing, to let someone else move and breathe for him. Even harder was not struggling against it, but Xander was working at it. The alternative was sleeping through it and he wasn't ready to let the barber run around without keeping an eye on him.

xxxxxxxx

Todd pulled out a stake and attempted to plunge it into the vampires heart one handed, in a straight across motion he'd seen the blonde slayer use the night before. The shock of the impact ran up his arm and he heard and felt bone crack as the point of his weapon came up against the creature's sternum and failed to punch through.

This annoyed it.

The fledgling backhanded him as Sweeney attempted to throw himself out of the way of the strike. He caught enough of it that it hurt and he lost his stake when he ended up on his back in the dirt, but he also managed to avoid having his neck snapped by the attack. He rolled out of the way and onto his knees in time that the vampire leapt for him and missed, sprawling in the dirt. While the bloodsucker righted itself into a similar position to Todd's, the barber pulled out his preferred weapon.

It turned out that even something dead, that didn't need to breathe and currently wasn't likely to bleed much, could still be distracted by having its throat cut. The vampire's hands moved reflectively to his neck, giving Sweeney enough time to drop his razor and pull out a second stake. This time he used both hands as he rammed it in under the thing's rib cage, aiming for the heart.

Dust, it turned out, wasn't as enticing as blood, but it would do.

xxxxxxxx

Xander spat that very same dust out of his mouth as he staggered to his feet.

"Well, that went well." Yes, sarcasm and Xander were old, dear friends. "Do you think next time you could close my mouth **before** you stake the vampire?"

'_Grunt.' _

Great, now he wasn't even getting syllables.

xxxxxxxx

One of the things Sweeney did not long after he'd made himself know, was to get the boy to buy another strop and a hone. The travelling strop that he kept on his belt worked, but a wider, thicker one would be better and the blades really needed a proper honing.

The teen surprised him by asking him to teach him to do it. Sweeney demonstrated on two of the blades before letting Xander try it on the razor he almost always had on him. He had him move slowly, talking him through each step carefully

It was the most he'd said to the teen since he'd possessed him.

Xander visually checked the edge of the blade before moving the razor to the leather strop to finish it. The motion was soothing in a strange way and without really meaning to a question that had been bothering him for a while escaped his mouth.

"Why do you still do it?" Xander fought off the urge to wince as soon as he said it. At the rate he was screwing his face up in that position, he'd be a wrinkled prune by the end of the school year if he didn't stop.

'_Do what?'_

Xander knew he ought to shut up about now, but really, it wasn't in his nature to shy away from putting his foot in it.

"Why do you still kill?"

Dead. Silence.

"I know you regret killing your wife. I know you're still horrified that you almost killed your daughter. I know you hate what you became, so why are you still doing it?"

Still no answer.

Xander dipped his thumb into the bowl of water he'd laid out with the other supplies and checked the edge of the blade cautiously against the digit. Satisfied with the result, he wiped the razor clean, closing it before carefully returning it to the box.

It was lucky Sweeney waited. He'd have cut himself if the barber had started talking sooner.

'_I think I believed that part of me would sleep once I was done with the Judge. Then I thought that eventually, with enough time spent in Hell, that they would crush it out of me. However, that need was born in pain, emotional pain, and I don't ever seem to run out.'_

"So what's causing the pain now?"

'_What's causing the pain?' _Sweeny asked, his mental voice a little too quiet and dead. Xander hunched in on himself as the barber snarled out the next two words. _'What isn't?'_

'_That an idiot with a spell pulled me out of the after life and dropped me into the body of a teenager who lives in a town beset by demons should be more than enough. If you don't feel that it is, we can count the fact that my defiled and mad wife is dead by my hand. My daughter escaped that fate by pure chance and I know nothing of what happened to her, other than that she is long dead by this time. A woman I trusted with everything and would have trusted with more betrayed me so deeply words can not convey its true depths and she did this within the first hour of meeting me again after I had spent 15 years in prison on a false charge. I died, went to Hell for 150 years and discovered that, to no surprise, I belong there.' _Xander swallowed thickly at that revelation. _'Never believe differently, I do belong there. I deserve to be there.' _

"Why?" Xander realized how stupid the question was give the list of the barber's transgressions, but it slipped out before he could stop it. Surprisingly, Sweeney answered it.

'_I killed. I murdered. I committed cannibalism and helped trick others into committing it unawares. But mostly, it is because while I do regret killing my wife and I do regret what I had to become, I don't regret the other killings. They were nothing but practice.' _

"That's cold."

'_Yes, it is.'_

Xander's eyes narrowed as he contemplated everything Sweeney had just said. "It's more than that, why you believe you belong in Hell."

'_The rest is none of your business.'_

Further prodding had gotten Xander nowhere, and eventually Sweeney took over again to finish with the razors.

xxxxxxxx

Despite that cheerful conversation and other than the fact that both of them were keeping an eye on Giles, Sweeney and Xander more or less slid into separate lives in one body. Sweeney continued to hunt vampires, nightly. After a few times, despite his concerns, Xander would occasionally sleep through the hunts. The mental exhaustion of trying to watch the barber's every move proving too much after a few days. When awake, he himself dealt with school, family and the daily weirdness that was the Hellmouth. Weirdness that was going to happen whether he was possessed or not.

After one vampire too many managed to ignore having their throat slit before being staked, Xander suggested for the sake of his bruised and battered body,if for nothing else, that they treat the razors with holy water and get an actual priest to bless them.

The holy water was easy. They always had some around. As for the priest.

Xander knocked on the door to the rectory, fidgeting. He'd hoped to catch the priest at the church, but no such luck, so now he was trying him at home. It was only about eight o'clock, so there was a good chance he'd be up and hopefully not too busy.

Having seen the occasional murder mystery he'd expected a housekeeper to answer the door and was surprised when Father Martell answered himself.

"May I help you?"

Xander shuffled slightly. "Uh, yeah. I was wondering, if you could bless something for me?"

The priest didn't verbally invite him in, though he did step back to let him in and he didn't even twitch when he saw what it was that Xander wanted blessed.

"Uh, they're my uncles, and he's really religious, and I thought it would be a nice thing if I got this done for…"

Father Martell held up a hand, stopping Xander in mid babble. He looked over the boy, noticing the cuts to his hands, a bruise to his chin and the fact that he'd entered with a slight limp. Anyone else might have believed the boy was fighting. Maybe even involved in gang violence.

Father Martell wasn't one of them. The cuts on the boys hands weren't from a blade, they were from having to pull splinters out. Wooden splinters. Martell had a few scars from his youth that were similar. Priests and such didn't last long on the Hellmouth if they didn't protect themselves and he'd been there a long time now. He knew what was out there and did what he could against it, even if it wasn't much.

"Are you absolutely sure that you wish to do this?"

Xander stepped back a little, surprised. He could tell what the real question was.

"Yes."

"Will you do good work with them?"

For a moment, there was something else in the boy's eyes.

"Always." He replied. Sounding almost English in that one word.

The priest nodded and performed the blessing, which only took a few minutes and didn't require any of the things Xander thought it would.

He took the razors back. "So that's it, they're good to go?"

Father Martell nodded. "Be safe going home. As I'm sure you know, Sunnydale can be a dangerous place at night."

Xander nodded. "Yeah, thanks."

Martell saw him out, watching as the boy walked away. He hoped that the next time he saw him it wouldn't be to recognize his picture in the obituaries.

Though if it were, he'd make sure the boy didn't rise as what he was hunting.

xxxxxxxx

A few nights later, Sweeney was heading towards the school, nursing the black eye he'd leave Xander with once they switched. Damn vampire had gone and punched him of all things. Bite, throw, kick. Those things he had expected. Punch, was sort of old school fighting, even for them. Awake for a change, Xander had suggested borrowing one of the cold packs from the first aid kit in the library so that his eye didn't swell up so much that he couldn't see. He also suggested that maybe while they were there, they could lock pick their way into the book cage and borrow the watcher's journal they'd been reading long enough to photocopy it. It would be easier and safer than trying to read it there.

They were crossing the sporting field, coming in at the back of the school, when Sweeney saw a wooden baseball bat lying on the ground. He scooped it up as he walked by, noticing that a crack ran down the centre of it. As a game bat, it would be useless, but he might be able to salvage enough of the wood to make a stake or two out of it. While he was getting better at dispatching the vampires, he wasn't always fast enough to retrieve his stakes before they disintegrated with the corpses.

The sound of someone pounding on a door and yelling for help came to their eyes, or rather, Xander's ears. Sweeney tilted his, their head towards the noise, but didn't seem too interested in finding out what it was.

_:You know, someone yelling for help probably means there's something there that you can kill.:_

Sweeney grunted, the boy's attempt at subterfuge was poor, but he sped his steps anyway.

xxxxxxxx

A woman was just wrapping her hands around a terrified and sweating man's throat when Sweeney cleared his own throat to get her attention. Hands still holding the man against the library's back door, she turned to look at him.

Sweeney had to take a step back. This was no vampire, but whatever she was, it wasn't human.

_:Ack, zombie, zombie.:_

'_And what is that?' _Sweeney thought the question back at Xander.

_:Walking dead. Go after motor control. Head, spine, something, anything.:_

Oh well, he did have the baseball bat.

xxxxxxxx

Buffy had just turned off the music she was using during the callisthenics' portion of her training, when she heard a meaty thump at the back of the library and someone banging on the door.

Buffy jogged to the back, Giles following her. Now she could hear someone calling for help over the banging. Opening the door, she was nearly bowled over by a man in a suit who practically fell on top of her trying to get inside.

She heard another meaty whack.

Shoving the guy off her and leaving Giles to help him to his feet, she headed to the door and looked out. She was just in time to see Xander attempt to hit a home run using a baseball bat, and someone's head.

Successfully.

She had to wonder, just briefly, how weird her world was that when the headless body dropped to the ground and turned into a pool of green goo, she relaxed.

xxxxxxxx

Sweeney mentally stepped sideways and Xander dropped the shattered remains of the baseball bat.

"Hey Buff."

"Hey Buff?" She fully intended to freak out on him, until she saw his black eye.

"Oh, she got you a good one."

At his confused look, she pointed at his eye. "Get in here; we need to get something on it before it swells any more."

Funny, he'd forgotten about the eye, but now that she mentioned it, the pain reintroduced itself to him.

xxxxxxxx

Buffy got him a cold pack, while Giles quietly spoke with the man who had been about to become Zombie chow. From the way they were talking, they knew each other and Giles wasn't all that happy to see him.

"Hey, G-man, want to introduce us?" Xander asked, while carefully holding the cold pack to his face.

Giles gave him an annoyed look and Xander felt Sweeney shift, as if he believed he'd have to take over. Which was silly, because even if the librarian wasn't who he made himself out to be, he probably wouldn't do anything with Buffy right there.

Probably.

"This is Philip Henry; he's an old friend of mine, from London. We haven't seen each other in… 20 years." He hesitated, clearly not happy about introducing them to his friend. "Philip, these are two of the students here, Buffy and Xander."

"Pleased to meet you." He said. "In fact, I'd say, very pleased to meet you, given the young man's timely assist."

"That's me, a timely assist."

"Wow." Buffy said, bouncing slightly on her toes. "20 years. Lots to catch up on then."

"Yes, well." Giles cleared his throat lightly. "Given that, perhaps we could wrap tonight's training."

"Don't have to tell me twice." She grabbed her jacket and her exercising supplies. "Hey Xan, walk you home?"

Inside, he felt Sweeney bristle. Apparently, he didn't like being seen as helpless by some slip of a girl. Quietly, Xander reminded him that this slip of a girl could probably bench press a car. Besides, there could be more zombies, and they were out of baseball bats.

xxxxxxxx

"So, you and Giles hanging out at night now?" Xander asked.

Buffy gave him a 'what drugs are you on' look. "No." With a tilt of her head, she amended that. "Not really."

"That was nothing like a concise answer Buff."

She shrugged. "It's training. You know, the slayer gig."

Xander nodded. He had known, he just hadn't expected them to be at it once the sun went down. The only reason he'd decided to raid the library was that he expected Buffy to be out on patrol and hoped Giles would be somewhere else.

"So, Xander, why were you outside the library, at night, with a baseball bat?"

Ack, think fast Harris, think fast. Not working. Okay, deflect.

He gave her a goofy grin. "It wasn't me, it was Colonel Mustard, in the library with the…"

"Xander!" She watched, not without concern, as the young man sputtered to a stop and then seemed to deflate. He gave her a searching look and then sighed.

"I was going to sneak into the library for the night."

She noticed Xander wince, almost as if someone had hit him upside the head. The expression was quickly followed with an annoyed look.

"Xan?"

He shook his head, as if disagreeing with something… or someone.

"Sorry, I didn't really want to talk about it, but my parents are arguing more than usual. So, it just seemed like a good idea to be somewhere that they aren't."

Now Buffy winced. "God, I'm… I'm so sorry Xander. I shouldn't have…"

"Nah, it's okay."

They walked a little farther. Buffy fidgeted a bit before speaking again. "Um, you could stay over at my place tonight."

He gave her an uncertain smile and shook his head.

"It's okay Buff. By now they're probably…" They turned onto his street and a police car, with lights flashing was easy to see parked in front of his house. Apparently, they really had been having one of their arguments. Buffy's offer was suddenly looking very good.

This was the Hellmouth though, so he couldn't just walk away and assume that the cops were there because the 'rents had gotten a little loud. Okay, probably a lot loud, but still.

Halfway up the block, he could hear his Dad yelling about Mom cleaning everything in sight for two months out of the year and being useless the rest of it. His Mom was yelling back, about him leaving his underwear lying in the middle of the floor, which was when Xander decided to tune her out for the sake of his own sanity.

As fights went, it was pretty innocent for them, even if it did still go over its 'too much information' quotient. Didn't mean he wanted to end up in the middle of it though.

Buffy noticed Xander stiffen and just assumed that her friend was feeling parental embarrassment. Instead, he had done so because in the back of his mind, he could feel Sweeney studying the situation.

_:No.:_

'_They are a problem, and you are more than old enough to be on your own or in an apprenticeship.'_

"It doesn't work like that anymore."

"What doesn't?" Buffy asked.

"Uh." Xander's brain stalled as he realized that he said that aloud.

"Nothing, it's okay. I'll see you at school tomorrow."

He'd intended to jog away before she could stop him, but unsurprisingly, she was too fast for him. Latching on to his arm, she easily held him in place.

"Hey, unauthorized use of Slayer Strength (trademark pending) there."

"Sorry." She said, but she didn't let go. "The invitation is still open."

He looked at her, confused.

She gave him an annoyed look. "My place. You, spend the night? Ring any bells?"

"Ah, well, while that invite makes a very happy boy…"

She let go of him, but only so she could swat him. It was done lightly, but he still went 'ow', and clutched at his arm."

"Ass."

He smiled. "Yep, certified even."

"Xander."

The smile fell off his face. "Honest Buffy, it's okay. This happens at least once in November. Mom gets really worked up over the whole, Thanksgiving and Christmas experience. Tries to keep the house perfect and usually ends up melting down a few times. Dad never helps. He just gets angry and eventually the two of them blow up at the same time. When this happens, well." He waved his hand towards the police car. "Loudness ensues."

This time he moved away before could stop him, giving her a backwards wave as he made his way home. She watched until she saw him get inside the house. Instead of going home right away, she decided to run a quick patrol and work off some of the frustration of not being able to help a friend.

The two vampires she dusted that night found out just how bad an idea it was to try and jump an already pissed off slayer.

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Xander made sure to be in his room and in bed before the cops left. He was just drifting off to sleep when…"

'_You would inherit all of their worldly goods.'_

"Laa, laaa, laaaaa, I'm not listening to you."

The killer in his head made an annoyed sound, but didn't say anything more on it for the rest of the night.

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Giles and his friend Philip spent a lot of time researching over the next day. The Watcher even passed on an invite from Ms. Calendar, although he did take a break long enough to help Buffy protect a blood shipment. Buffy came back all happy, because Angel had shown up to help them and was barely noticing Giles' preoccupation with other things.

Xander and Sweeney kept an eye on him and Philip. Xander wasn't sure he liked Giles' friend. Sweeney, as usual, rarely liked anyone. Philip wasn't a Watcher, which after reading part of that journal was actually a mark to the plus side of the columns. He also hadn't done anything suspicious, other than almost become Zombie chow.

Of course, that could be considered suspicious.

And so could the alcohol. It was suspicious, because Xander had never known Giles to drink anything harder than tea. They were discrete about it, he didn't see either of them drinking, not surprising as he was only able to look in on them for a few minutes here and there, but you didn't live with alcoholic parents and not recognise the smell of alcohol in the air.

When he thought about it, he also tossed in the sadness. They were both acting as if they'd lost someone. Not family, an old friend maybe, one they hadn't seen in some time.

Eventually he headed home. Sweeney even agreed to stay in. A Friday night, and Xander went to bed early, because tomorrow, he had a bonus day of class plus Cordelia.

Joy.

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Cordelia surprised him the next morning, by stuffing Sweeney's overcoat into his hands.

"Here, I keep forgetting to give this back."

"Ah, thanks." He'd kept forgetting himself, even though Sweeney had taken to reminding him about the thing at least twice a day.

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Sweeney stared at the computer screen along with Xander. The teenager had given up trying to explain the thing to Sweeney about half an hour ago. Sweeney didn't blame him, though he still couldn't quite grasp why anyone utilized the things, despite the list of uses the teacher had reeled off as they entered the classroom. He understood the benefits of modern technology. Indoor plumbing in every house and electricity that worked much better than gaslight made sense. Even the 'videos' that Xander watched were understandable. Watching a play in the comfort of your own home, with people you actually wished to be with beat the noise and the smell and the jostling he'd dealt with the few times he'd gone to the theatre with his wife. He wouldn't know how to act now, he realized. It was quite possible he'd kill the first person to accidentally step on his toes.

Mentally, Xander started up a long line of curses. Amused, the barber focused his attention on the box and keyboard the young man was working on.

Sweeney thought the math involved in programming was… interesting. He'd always done well at numbers, but this was at the level of learned men teaching and attending the universities and colleges, not that of a lowly barber with only a few years of schooling.

Both he and Xander glanced towards the library. Giles and his friend had arrived about the same time they had. Ms. Calendar had left the classroom door open and Xander had seen them come in, looking under slept and hung over as they headed in to continue their research. .

Xander came close to thumping his head down on his keyboard, because it wasn't until just then that he realized that the two men were being hunted. You didn't let something ride you like this, nor did you look this hard for something if it wasn't after you. And given the amount of research, it was something they didn't know how to get rid of.

When the yelling and the crashing started, he thought maybe whatever it was had found them.

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All of them, students and teacher, stopped just inside the library doors, stunned to see Philip standing by while Giles beat the ever-living crap out of someone.

'_You may want to stop him. It is likely that we will need the Mage in the future.'_

"Wha?"

Xander felt a sigh run through his body. _'Allow me then.'_

Xander struggled briefly as he was pushed to the back of his mind. He protested to Sweeney, loudly, but he still got out of the way.

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"STOP!"

Giles felt hands grab him and pull him away just as he was about to land a kick that he hoped would break Ethan's ribs. He tried to shake the man off, grunting in pain and stopping when he found himself in a hold that would quite likely dislocate his shoulder if he tried any harder.

His captor let him go as he shoved him towards the reading table. Giles slammed his hands down on top of it to stop himself from ending up over it. Breathing hard and trying to control his anger, he didn't notice as the man who had stopped him ordered Philip to pick Ethan up and sit him on a chair.

By the time he looked up, Ethan was on the chair, Philip was standing behind him, and Xander was glaring at all of them, his face pale and his hair nearly standing on end. Behind him, Ms. Calendar, Cordelia and Willow were nearly equally pale and staring at all of them with wide eyes.

Xander pointed at another empty chair.

"Sit!"

Startled, Giles didn't think to protest until after he was sitting. Even then, he only got a few words out before Xander's glare shut him up. He felt unbalanced, and realized that somehow; the teenager and he had switched their usual roles. Usually Giles had been the one to bring the young man in line when he went off on one of his silly tangents.

"You." Xander pointed at Philip. "Make yourself of use, find the first aid kit." The man was smart enough to do what he as told, without saying anything.

Giles shook his head. His hearing was off. Well that or Xander suddenly had an English accent.

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Ethan knew enough to find that English accent worrying, because it meant the boy wasn't currently a boy. Rather, he was a murderous 19th century barber who was expecting Ethan to be working on his problem. A serial killer like Sweeney probably wouldn't have much patience for Ethan's little demon problem.

So yes, he was worried. But to be honest, at the moment he hurt to much to devote any time to it. Philip passed him a cold pack and Ethan hissed as he pressed it to some of the worst swelling.

"Couldn't have helped before I needed the first aid?"

Philip snorted. "I know better than to get between Ripper and his prey. Just be glad I didn't help him."

"Mmm. Still sore about that spell, huh?"

Philip cleaned out a cut on Ethan's face with a liberal amount of alcohol, smirking just a bit at the man's surprised shout of pain.

"Boils Ethan. Boils for two weeks."

Ethan shrugged and thought it prudent to not mention that he'd actually messed the spell up. The effects should have been much worse than that. Funnier too.

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Xander took control of his body back, though he could swear he could feel Sweeney pacing in the background. Ms. Calendar was standing over by Giles, talking quietly with him and applying their last cold pack to his bruised knuckles. Cordelia was leaning against the checkout desk and was paying more attention to her nails than to what was going on…

And Willow was coming out of Giles' office. Xander gave her a raised eyebrow that was a question.

"I phoned Buffy. She'll be right over."

'_Joy.' _Sweeney thought.

_:Stuff it.: _Xander thought back.

'_You do realize that Ethan is the Mage that is trying to find a way to get me out of you? Him being detained or killed would not work well to that outcome.'_

_:Bleeding hell… er… I mean, darn it.: _It was bad enough that he had to fight for space in his body; he didn't need to start using Sweeney's speech patterns on top of it. Even if he was just thinking it.

'_And the Watcher still appears as if he intends to bury the hatchet, in Rayne's' head.'_

Xander gave the librarian a look and slumped when he found that the barber was right.

"So, anyone want to let us know what this love fest was all about?" He asked.

All three men gave him a sour look, although Ethan's was also searching.

"Come on Giles, your friend Philip shows up being chased by a zombie, and then the guy who screwed us over on Halloween shows up and it's obvious from the way you were beating on him that you know him. So give. What is up?"

Giles straightened himself up. "This isn't your business Xander. He looked at the girls. "It isn't anyone's business but ours."

'_You have one of the mid-sized razors in your right front pocket.'_

Oh yeah, Xander was tempted. For one bright angry moment, he could have done it. At the very least, he would have punched the librarian.

Then Ethan laughed.

"Come off it Ripper. As long as you're in the same town with them, it's their business. Just being this close to them could get them killed. You know He won't care about innocent bystanders."

"And just who is 'He'." Buffy stood by the library doors, glaring at Ethan. Xander realized that she must have slipped while he was too angry to notice.

"No one." Giles said.

"He's a demon." Ethan said at the same time.

"Wow, now there's a difference of opinion." Cordelia shrugged as everyone turned to look at her. "What? It is."

"What demon?" Buffy asked, focusing on the problem at hand.

"Ethan." Giles said, warningly.

"Eyghon." The chaos mage said with an annoyed glance at the Watcher. "And get off your high horse Ripper. You know he's coming. You've been having the dreams, we all have."

"What dreams? What is going on?"

"Tell her, Ripper."

The librarian stood and glared at the mage.

"Giles…" Buffy asked, real concern in her voice.

The Watcher seemed to fold up on himself. Reaching for his chair, he sat down heavily in it.

"This isn't your battle, Buffy."

"That's where you're wrong. So share or the beat down you gave him will seem mild in comparison."

Giles bristled for a moment, and Xander decided that he'd hold him down for that beating himself if he tried to weasel out of talking again. It was probably a close call, but when he saw the man deflate and slump, he knew he wouldn't have to.

And he ignored Sweeney's mutterings of unhappiness over that.

Giles fixed his eyes on Ms. Calendar for a moment, then sighed and then turned them to the floor. "I was twenty-one, studying history at Oxford. And, of course, the occult by night. I hated it. The tedious grind of study, the... overwhelming pressure of my destiny. I dropped out, I went to London…" He blew out a breath. "I fell in with the worst crowd that would have me. "

Philip shifted uncomfortably and Ethan let out a bark of laughter. Both men were ignored.

"We practiced magicks. Small stuff for pleasure or gain." Giles looked up at the Chaos Mage. "And Ethan and I discovered something... Bigger."

Ethan had the grace to wince.

"Eyghon." Buffy said, startling everyone.

Yes. One of us would, um…" He pulled his glasses off, dropped them onto the reading table and ran a hand through his hair. "One of us would go into a deep sleep, and the others would, uh, summon him. It was an extraordinary high!" He looked ill as he said the last part.

"God, we were fools."

"You couldn't control it."

Giles shook his head. "No, one of us, Randall, he lost control. Eyghon took him whole. We tried to exorcise the demon from Randall, but it killed him. No. We killed him."

Everyone shifted uncomfortably at that statement.

"We thought we were free of the demon after that. But now he's back. The zombie Xander destroyed the other night, she was one of us. Her name was Deirdre. He was possessing her thankfully dead body when Xander…"

"Hit a home run?"

He expected the glares. The statement was insensitive and he knew it, but it also shook all of them out of the horror of the situation long enough to grab hold of their sanity again.

"With Deirdre body destroyed it will take him a while to come back. But he will get here eventually." He sighed. "Ethan's right, being near us is too dangerous. We don't dare to still be in town when that happens or all of you will be caught up in it as well."

"No."

"Buffy."

"No, we'll figure something out."

"We've been looking Buffy, there's nothing that will help us."

"So we look harder. All of us."

Giles opened his mouth to continue to argue, but Xander beat him out. "Just give in Giles. You're not going to win this one."

With a sigh, Giles slumped further down into his seat than Xander thought a grown man would be capable of doing.

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"Hey, it says here you can kill a demon by cutting off its head." Cordelia said, holding up the book she was looking at.

Philip shook his head. "We thought of that, but it wouldn't work. If it had the demon would have died when the young man…." He swallowed, disturbed. "Anyway, he killed her by removing her head, but we're still having the dreams, so Eyghon is still alive."

"Yes." Giles said, exchanging the book he'd been looking at for another. "The cutting the head off the demon is mostly wishful thinking, although it apparently does work with some breeds. Not many, but some."

Xander looked up from the book he was reading. "Hey, if this thing took years to find you after you… well, if it took years, why wouldn't it take that long now?"

Philip answered that one. "When we killed Randal, it didn't have any time to… make a back up plan. However, it was in Deirdre long enough that it may have been able to set something up.

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The morgue at Sunnydale General was quiet, one might even say too quiet if you knew anything about what really went on in Sunnydale. The attendant was checking on a body that the funeral home would be picking up later that night.

The person's effects were already on the gurney with the cadaver. The attendant flipped down the sheet covering it to make sure that the body was indeed who it was supposed to be. A man in his twenties lay there.

The attendant looked over the file.

"Hmmm. Car accident. No distinguishing marks." He looked at the body again, noting a tattoo on the shoulder, something odd and squiggly like.

"Ah, crap. Is this the wrong… erk?"

Eyes wide, he flailed at the hand wrapped around his throat and watched in horror as the body of the young man attempted to stand up. It slid off the gurney and promptly fell to the floor, dragging him with it. Confused, the body ran its free hand down its back. It took it only a moment to realize that the reason the young man had died was due to the injuries to his spine and that the body was useless from the waist down. The upper body was fine though, and its other hand tightened around the attendant's throat.

"I'm going to have to use you, instead."

That was the fourth nighttime morgue attendant Sunnydale General lost that month.

And it wasn't even the record.

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Xander was going to tell Sweeney to stop pacing in the back of his mind, because he was giving him a headache, when the barber stopped on his own.

'_Wait, read that again.'_

Bleary eyed, Xander blinked and tried to focus on the paragraph he'd just been reading.

'_Possessing demons cannot be killed by killing their hosts. Any attack must be against their true essence. This is often difficult, as few of them have a form real enough to be harmed in the earthly realms. Therefore, they can usually only be destroyed in the realm of the mind.'_

'_Hmmm.'_

_:What?:_

'_It occurs to me that if such a demon were to possess a living host, then they would then have to fight the mind that owns the body. The reason that Eyghon probably doesn't have much trouble with them is that he is powerful, and they are asleep. If however, he were to possess someone like you, who is already possessed, he would then have to deal with me, or in another person's case, whatever creature, demon or otherwise, that was doing the second possessing.'_

_:Uh, does that mean you're volunteering us?:_

'_Snort. No. I do not like your friends that much and I trust the Watcher even less."_

_:We all do stupid things when we're young. Hell, I'm probably a walking object lesson in that alone.:_

'_Yes, but it is the Watcher that I do not trust, not the young man he use to be.'_

_:He didn't want to be a Watcher.: _Xander thought, remembering what Giles had said.

'_No, and from what we've seen of the Watcher journals, that is a point in his favour.'_

_:They may not all be as bad as the one we read.:_

'_Are you willing to bet serious money on that? More than that, are you willing to bet your friends' lives?'_

Sweeney gave an amused snort when Xander didn't say/think anything,

'_Show this book to the red headed girl.'_

_:Her name is Willow.: _Xander said for the hundredth time. Sweeney, as usual, ignored him.

'_I believe she's thinking straighter than the three men are. I'm not sure they would know the solution if it bit them on the ass. They're too close to the problem.'_

And, Xander noticed, probably in need of ten hours of sleep and something to eat and drink that wasn't alcohol, coffee or tea.

"Hey, Willow. Check this out." He passed her the book, pointed at the paragraph and left her to it. Standing, he dug into his pocket for some change.

"I'm going to get a soda, anyone want one?"

Everyone shook their heads as he headed out of the library and towards one of the hallway soda machines.

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Xander pulled a grape soda out of the machine, popped the top and took a healthy swallow.

"Ah."

'_Erg.'_

"Bitch, bitch, bitch. Do you always have to complain?"

'_Yes. By the way, do you know how many times members of your group get into trouble by going off on their own?'_

"I'm in the school, what could happen?" He turned around and came face to face with a man wearing hospital scrubs.

"Ah hell, I had to go and jinx myself, didn't I?"

"I remember you." The man said, just before he grabbed the surprised teen and threw him into a bank of school lockers.

Xander twisted back around, only to find a hand wrapped around his throat.

"Couldn't we talk about this?" He asked in a strangled gasp.

In answer, the demon bashed his head up against the locker. Xander's eyes rolled back in his head as he blacked out. Eyghon gave him a curious look, and then smiled. He dropped the boy, and then the body he was in dropped beside him, turning into a green goo that Xander's hand ended up laying in.

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'_Wake up.'_

_:Gahhh. What?:_

'_You were knocked out.'_

_:Oh, are you running my body?:_

'_No, neither of us are.'_

Xander groaned. _:I'm double possessed, aren't I?:_

'_Yes, now stop whining and help.'_

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Eyghon walked into the library and smiled. All three of his wayward acolytes were here in one room. He probably couldn't kill all three of them using this body. Once certainly, two possibly… But there was no reason to be greedy.

Hmmm. Not Giles. It would hurt him more to lose a friend and have it done by a child he considered under his protection. And not Ethan. He wanted to spend a little quality time with the mage.

Philip then, he was the one choice left.

He could easily use his hands, although a weapon would be nice. He skimmed his palms over Xander's pockets, not really expecting to find anything.

He pulled the lump in the front pocket out, surprised to find a gleaming silver razor.

'_Not with one of mine you won't. I'll let the boy use them, but not something like you.'_

"What?"

Buffy looked up at him and he hastily stuffed the razor back into the pocket.

"Thought you were going to get a drink."

"Uh, yeah, drank it there. I was really thirsty."

_:Grape is my favourite after all.:_

Eyghon twisted around, looking for the voice and finding nothing.

"Giles." A young redhead with a lot of power stood up at the reading table, excitement on her face. "I think I know how to kill it."

Well, perhaps he'd kill her first.

_:No, you don't.:_

The library was suddenly gone; in its place was a gloomy room with large grimy windows and a chair. The room had gaslight and it was lit, holding back the dark that pressed up against the dirty glass.

"Let me take your coat."

The man behind him was pale, with dark sunken eyes and wild hair. The demon didn't know where he'd come from. Come to think of it, he didn't know where the coat he allowed the man to remove from him came from either.

The man escorted him to the chair. In the corner of the room, shadowed in the gloom, he saw a young man, a teenager really, sitting on a ledge against the wall.

"Don't mind him, that's just my apprentice."

The young man snorted, but didn't say anything.

"Now, is it just a shave you're after, or would you like some pampering?"

Bemused, Eyghon sat. The man draped a white sheet over him and tilted the chair back. In this position, he was looking up at the window. His reflection in the glass wasn't of the young man he was possessing; instead it was his true form. Startled, he moved to get up, just in time to feel a very slim blade pass through his throat.

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"Shit." Sweeney dodged as the demon slapped a hand over the wound and came out of the chair, lashing out at him with the claws on the other hand. The cut to the throat had been deep, but apparently not deep enough. Behind the demon, Xander grabbed the shop broom and snapped the bottom of it off with his foot. It wasn't as hefty was the baseball bat, but he was still able to give the creature a good crack to the head.

Eyghon turned and recognized him. "You. You think you can take your mind back with these silly parlour tricks."

"We can try."

Eyghon frowned. "We?"

From behind, Sweeney slashed the razor across his back, staggering the demon forward and around the back of the chair. Eyghon had dismissed him as a construct that would be unable to act while he was dealing with its creator.

He turned and fended the man off, shoving him away and received another crack from the stick from the boy while he did.

"It's already a little crowded in here and I've already sold all of the time share options." Xander told him, a little breathless as swung at him again.

Sweeney staggered to his feet, and moved to reengage as well.

With a snarl, Eyghon reached out to shred the fantasy world they had created.

And Sweeney stomped his foot down on the peddle next to the chair.

The demon hung cartoon like in the air for a moment, eyes wide, then fell through the trap door into Sweeney's mental recreation of Mrs. Lovett's bake house.

Xander peered cautiously into the hole, but it was too dark to see anything. He carefully backed away as the trapdoor closed.

"Think that'll hold him?"

Sweeney gave him a look that made him glad that he could usually only hear the barber. Because really, the man was scary.

"I'll take that as a no."

"As much as it pains me, I'll try and keep him busy while you get help."

"What?" Xander asked. "How am I supposed to…?"

And Sweeney grabbed him, and shoved him to the front of their mind.

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Xander came to on the couch in Giles' office. Willow was hovering over him and Cordelia was sitting off to the side, looking bored.

"Oh Xander your awake what happened you passed out and fell but you probably know that unless you don't know that then I should tell you that…"

"Wills…" Normally he'd have told her to breathe, but he didn't have the time. "Get help."

"Um, we could take you to the doctors… ah." Willow jerked in surprise as Xander grabbed onto her wrist.

"Eyghon."

Cordelia stood quickly, looking around the room. "Where?"

Xander made an annoyed sound. "Me. He's inside m…" With a gasp, his eyes rolled back up into his head, again.

"BUFFY!"

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After Xander collapsed and they got him into Giles' office, Buffy went to check out where Xander had been just before that had happened.

"Giles, there's a big green and purple puddle of goo in the hallway near the drink machine."

The Watcher frowned. "Purple?"

Buffy shrugged. "I think that part's grape soda, but I thought I'd mention it just in case."

"BUFFY!"

Willow's yell was loud and panicked. The blonde bolted into the office. Willow was trying to pull her arm out of Xander's grip, and he was shaking as if he was having some kind of fit. Buffy went to help her, managing to force his hand open enough that Willow was able to slip free.

"Buffy, he woke up. He said it's Eyghon. That Eyghon is inside of him."

On the couch, Xander's eyes snapped open, but instead of being their normal brown colour, they were a sickly glowing yellow.

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Ethan had already scoped out all of the closest exits, so when the two girls came running out of the office yelling, with the Slayer tumbling out after obviously being thrown, he would have been half way to the back door before she'd have gotten back on her feet. Would have been, if Ripper hadn't tripped him. Philip laughed, even though he was already hovering near the library's front doors, ready to bolt that way if he had to.

"Stay put Ethan." Giles said, glaring down at him.

"Are you mad?"

An odd smile twisted at Giles' face.

"No, just very pissed off. Now stay put. Jenny should be back soon. If we have to retreat we will…"

Xander stepped out into the library, eyes yellow, facial features shifting towards demonic and his skin starting to peel.

Ethan got carefully to his feet.

"I'd say that's a 'have to retreat' right there."

Philip went to open the library doors and almost got slammed into the wall as Jenny and Angel came running in. They'd been able to hear the yelling from the other end of the hall.

Angel saw Xander looking not very Xander like and rolled his eyes. "I have to save him?"

"Angel!" Buffy managed to pack, 'both of you are annoying sniping males that need a kick to the ass every time you're in the same room together, now get over here and help' into that one word just by the tone of her voice.

"On it." Bounding across the room, Angel grabbed Xander and started to choke him.

"Please work, please work, please work…" Willow just kept repeating the words over and over, her eyes narrowed down to slits because she could barely stand to watch.

Xander fought, clawing at the hands holding him. Then, with a suddenly gasp, Angel jerked away, staggering.

Willow opened her eyes all the way. "Did it work?" She went to help her Xander shaped friend. Cordelia gave an annoyed huff and did the same. Between them, they helped the dazed teen to his feet.

Angel continued to back away, and then yelled out, his eyes glowing. His face became like the demons, then like when he was a vampire, then like himself. Staggering away, he slammed into the library table, his face changing over and over again.

He straightened as if someone had pulled him upright, fully the demon, then with another yell he went flying, skidding across the floor, making it halfway to the library's doors.

Himself, the demon, himself, the demon…. With a push everyone in the room could practically feel, Angel reclaimed his face and shoved the demon out of his body. With its injuries from both possessions and without another back up plan body to travel to, it held a shape for just a moment, before crumbling to dust and ash.

"How did that possibly work?" Xander asked, holding onto Willow, as he was still a little unsteady.

Willow gave him a smile, half-nervous, half-triumphant. "I realized that if it was in danger, it would jump to the nearest unconscious…. Or dead body." She said the last with a head tilt towards Angel.

"And I've had a demon inside me for a couple hundred years...just waitin' for a good fight." Angel said as he accepted a hand up from Buffy.

Xander laughed. "Thanks dead-guy."

Buffy rolled her eyes and Angel shook his head, but neither of them said anything.

It was Philip who noticed that Ethan had disappeared in all the excitement.

Giles sighed. "Yes, well hopefully this time he'll take my advice and leave town."

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Ethan stuffed the last few of his belongings into his bag and looked around the back room of the shop he'd been leasing.

"You're rather predictable, for a Chaos Mage."

"Bugger me."

"I'd rather not if it's all the same."

Ethan backed away from the barber. And it was the barber. He'd wondered a time or two in the library, just who he was talking to. Now, it was rather obvious. The boy's face was too pale, the hair too wild for it to be anyone but Sweeney Todd.

"I believe I commissioned you to perform a job for me."

Ethan gave him a nervous smile. "Oh, didn't realize I was getting paid for it."

"You're alive, aren't you?"

Ethan swallowed. "Good point." He looked around, but he didn't have anywhere that he could go.

"Look, I am working on the problem; I just had to take care of this one. Couldn't exactly fix you if I'm dead, now could I?"

Todd's eyes glittered blackly as he looked him over. "No, I suppose not. Given the delay, I will be expecting regular updates from now on.

"How regular?"

"Weekly. Sooner if you find something. This needs to be done Rayne." He walked towards the mage who backed up the few inches he had left. "As entertaining as it is to hunt in Sunnydale, I really shouldn't be here."

"You should have let Eyghon kill you then." Ethan winced as soon as he said it. "Damn it, me and my big mouth."

Strangely, Sweeney appeared amused. "Actually, I considered it, but it would have left the boy helpless. Besides, I really didn't like that demon and I'd not intended to let him leave my chair. Sadly, demon is harder to cut through than human."

"Errk. So, how do you want your updates?"

Sweeney tilted his head in though. Perhaps, there was some use to Xander's Saturday class after all.

"Have you ever heard of e-mail?"


End file.
